The Scariest Part of Traveling, Part III: The Art of Saying Good-Bye

Even though I tried to prepare myself, even though I felt it coming, one cannot truly be ready to hear it . . .

Good-bye.

You never said those two syllables. They didn’t slip out of your lips and into the receiver. Your expansive vocabulary said it, but in a different way. Not in a definitive way. Not in a way that puts a period at the end. It was like a whisper, a secret. You never said it with words.

But you still did.

My words on this website three months ago were the preface to the love note I have been writing to you each day since. We have communicated at least once per day since then. Every word an addition to our co-created story. That’s a lot of talking, and a lot of words. A lot of learning and sharing and feelings and thinking and letting my mind race, and tumble over itself. Wondering if maybe. Maybe did I find someone that I wouldn’t have to say good-bye to? Each word was penned with ink from my heart as an ominous foreshadow hung over. I would let my mind wonder, and wander, but all the while I knew this would most likely end in a good-bye, because everything always does. You never mislead or lied to me, I mislead myself into the trap that is hope, hope that maybe, just maybe it was possible to make love stay as a traveler. To make something last, as someone that leaves. That was my hope. But the problem with hope is that–

And now I’m here, still here, and you’re there, and I’m writing about hopelessness, and the faint despair that comes from being on the road, being a tramp, being the traveler. That traveler that everyone loves to love, and take home a piece of, but never to keep. Never to hold on to for more than what suits the suitor. Why else would someone travel for five years besides the fact everyone has been so ready to let go of them? To say good-bye.

It’s hard to say, because now I’m here. And here I am again, having just said good-bye to the last person that I’ve cared for.

I know that we will be friends, and maintain a connection. I don’t lose touch with many people unless I have a good reason to. But you said it yourself; you worry that we will disappear, and fade from each other’s lives. The same way that so many have and will. I hope that won’t happen either. My hope is that we can say good-bye in order to say hello with a new part of ourselves, so we can continue to know each other. So that neither of us will disappear before we can actually say good-bye.

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M. A. Chavez

Is co-founder of Vagrant. Anonymous. He spends his time split between traveling and the North West. He is currently working on getting his debut novel published, and writing his second.

       How do you deal with love on the road? What’s the scariest part of traveling for you?

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