When I graduated from high school, some friends and I all went camping to celebrate. We were excited about moving out, moving up, and moving on from our small town. When we were packing up the next morning, my friend Greg (whom I’ve known since we were in 6th or 7th grade) started giving me this heartfelt goodbye. I kind of laughed it off and just told him, “Its not like I’m not going to see you!!” For years now, he’s given me a hard time about this and tells me that I’m horrible at goodbyes…I didn’t give out friendship the respect it deserved at that turning point in our lives. In all honesty I do see him occasionally, but it isn’t the same and I regret not hearing what he had to say.
This weekend was another one for goodbye’s. It’s graduation time at Georgia Tech and a lot of our friends are moving out, moving up, and moving on…but I’m staying here! We had to move Joe out of his house on Friday night, so that was hard. He has lived there basically since we started dating. Saturday we were up early early to go to graduation and it was such a loooonng ceremony! (I sat in the Georgia Dome from 7:30am to 1:00ish) After that, we went to lunch with Joe’s family and the Howard’s. We ate at fuego and the food was good, but something was missing…so we went to Krispy Kreme for desert! It was good spending that time with Andrew and his family. Then we went to Gainesville for Todd’s graduation party. There was good food, friends, and some pretty competitive ping pong.
There are so many people that are leaving Atlanta (Andrew, Todd, Dana, Josh, Jen, Alissa, Andy (even just for summer), Agnes..and the list goes on). When I do get to say a proper goodbye, it’s common to hear, “I’ll be back over the summer/for a GA Tech football game/ within a year!” But I know as much as we’d like it to be, much like I learned with Greg, it’ll never be the same. I can only hope that I learned not to laugh it off and that I conveyed how much I value those friendships and that I will miss each one of them.
Congrats to the grads & good luck to those with major life changes…I wish you all the best!
….and you’d better be ready to hang out when you come back to visit!!! 🙂
(photos to be added later!)
Que Sera, Sara... 