To leave, is to die a little
Anyone who has ever said goodbye to someone or something they love knows the ache, at once sharp and sticky and persistent, that comes with splitting up their heart. I have left big bloody pieces of myself in various corners of this country and world. In particular, a sizable part of who I am is still splattered all over New York City. I recently heard the phrase, “Partir c’est mourir un peu,” or to leave is to die a little, and bless the French for having the language to capture exactly how I feel. The older I get, the wider my world spreads, and while this is a beautiful thing, it doesn’t come without a twinge of grief.
Last month, I traveled to
New York, a place I called home for seventeen years, with my husband and two daughters. There’s no other way to describe the trip except it felt freaking amazing. I was back with my people, the ones who held me up and inspired me and challenged me and made me who I am. Then to watch how my daughters fit into this, so effortlessly welcomed, tore open the scar tissue on my heart I thought had healed since my move back home to Chico. While I’m happy to be here (I truly am), I realized what I’ve missed most since moving from my community in New York is that profound feeling of time spent together. That thing that feels so magical but doesn’t just happen magically. It takes years. It takes work. It takes care.
The time under your collective wings, loving and learning and laughing and drinking and dancing and losing control and making big life choices and mistakes and getting our hearts broken and peeling ourselves up from pity puddles and out to brunch and making art and plays and clubhouses and memories. Time is air in the lungs of friendship. And to breathe it all in again, energized me, but also made me, well, die a little when I left.
The pandemic began shortly after I moved back to Chico. Before I had a chance to really start working my way into a new community. I spent the first year here reconnecting with old friends from high school who had also ventured back, which was meaningful and powerful in its own right and a great place to start. Then the second year, we were all socially distant from everything except our pods. And now I’m starting the third year with a new baby and a toddler, and I am rarely out past 6:00 pm. But recently I’ve made a new friend, and she’s awesome. She lives down the street from me and has a big table in her front yard where she and her husband host dinner parties. I attended one such gathering last weekend with three other (vaccinated) couples. I watched them all hug hello, so happy to see each other, and I could feel the depth and ease of their collective history. That thing I’ve been missing. My daughter ran around the yard with the other kids, making leaf potions and dipping her hands into rainbow-colored slime and trying on costumes, while I drank wine and listened to stories and laughed with some cool and interesting possible-friends around a fire pit. I could feel it all in my lungs. The start of a deep breath.
When my new friend hugged me goodbye that night, I realized it was our first hug. A gesture that was lost in social distancing, but one that means so much in parting. Then another guest at the party also hugged me goodbye, and I had only just met him hours before. It all felt very natural. It’s different making friends in your forties, when you have children to whom you have to give most of yourself. It’s extra different during a pandemic. There’s less opportunity for the wild nights of abandon. But I have to trust that something is growing here, too. In new and less reckless ways. Parts of me die every time I leave the people I love across the country, but there’s that other expression about parting being sweet sorrow. It is sweet, too. To have people all over that I love. For my children to know there is a world beyond our town that is big and wonderful, and that it is also pretty sweet here, too.