If you admire somebody you should go ahead and tell them, people never get the flowers whilst they can still smell them
Big Brother, by Kanye West
There’s so much pain in saying goodbye. The moment the words wheel off your tongue a heavy rung laces your lungs.
What just happened? Why do I feel this way?
The feeling is visceral. It can penetrate, perforate and puncture any task at hand or the focus you want to give elsewhere. You felt enveloped by the sun simmering on your skin, then suddenly overcome by a silent shadow shielding a stealth stinging storm. Once it takes hold it sinks deep and burns slow, ravishing every pore from brow to inner core.
So many people I could never have in my life, who teasingly and pleasingly burnt bright like fireworks that evaporate in the blink of an eye into the night sky. Sometimes it’s circumstance, where life must go on and people take different paths. Yet on other occasions people aren’t ready or willing to give you a chance. Too often they are overcome by the beast they perceive and let it overwhelm the beauty they receive.
I’m tired of such ephemeral encounters, exhausted by the glorious glimpse of extraordinary potential + energy blowing up in my face like a ticking trojan horse timebomb. Then Saying Goodbye. My feet have scraped its dated doormat too much for one lifetime. It senses the pressure of the pain I feel as I wave my palms, wiggle my fingers and eke the bittersweet creases of a crooked smile, then tears trickle behind my face. Out of sight, and into my mind.
It doesn’t get any easier, particularly now I know what’s on the way. The ritual of regurgitating the emotional rigmarole of pain, sorrow and emptiness may have now become routine but weighs heavier each time. Nursing the consequent wounds is something I’ve had to do more often than I would have liked. I sometimes worry they may become chronic or necrotic, or run deeper with each dagger.
The Last Time
What do you say? What do you do? How do you do it? When you know it’s the last time you will ever share the same time-space with someone special. It forever changes with each person, the moment + context is different yet the aura is vividly familiar and surreal. Heck, on many occasions I’ve not known it would be the last until the aftermath unfolds.
So it’s hard to do it right, particularly when you admire someone so much that everything else stops and you’re swimming in a crayon canvas of their beauty in full ferocious form. All else is silent + asleep, irrelevant with no heartbeat as this enigma pulsates in your every thought + feeling, and seeks to give your existence new meaning.
I don’t think I’ll ever have an answer or solution, and part of me doesn’t want to, because it may mean that I’ve honed the skill as a result of more repeated exposure. I’ve had enough already.
Appreciation
If I do not belong in someone else’s circumference, if I am not welcome or wanted, then I cannot continue to linger where there is no future that is mutually fruitful. Sometimes the forest has other fresh fruits that it intends for me to bare + share so it’s time to go. Regardless of whether I am ready, I must go with the flow.
But to me, with my integrity and deep sense of gratitude, it is of paramount importance + significance to show appreciation before I make tracks and proceed.
I mean, that’s what it’s all about right?! Everyone wants to be valued and appreciated, recognised and well regarded. Yet we also want to engage in the act and experience of appreciating someone. Well I know it’s something that I take great pleasure + honour in any way. It’s a huge blessing to be able to do so, especially when you can be yourself, to express what you want to say, how you really feel. That’s beautiful.
Yet how do you appreciate them in a way that truly conveys how you feel deeply within? How do you let them know?
I guess you implement ways + engage mediums you know best, that dignify + don’t disrespect, that acknowledge, accept + do no harm. Those platforms + actions that enable you to express effusively + articulately in line with your own values. Discover your own, hone it in your home + let it be known to those you love.
Gratitude
Saying goodbye can on many occasions be a heck of a relief! A breath of fresh air, a fleeting feeling of freedom flushing away the frustration.
But it can still also be painful, especially when you wish there was more time than that you shared, or that the dynamics could be different where thresholds weren’t crossed. But I guess what gives me hope + keeps me going is always being grateful. I guess it enables me to appreciate what I once had, and let’s me believe that I can have it once more, albeit in a different form + feel at a time when life thinks you are ready + it is appropriate to reveal.
So until then, I’ll be patient, give my time + energy to all that resonates with my values + passion, and let them come, to me. Or better yet, let’s meet in the middle, on our own respective journeys of discovery.
Yes, I like that. It helps me look forward to the flowers I may smell in the fresh meadows that await me after this storm.
drBACKPACK 