i only write in lowercase these days. its a way to be small and unobtrusive, like a whisper in a crowded room.

i am mourning goodbyes, processing the layers of pain and it is dawning…the longer the relationship, the more multifaceted the grief of it. long goodbyes are wrenching. but why?

when you share life, your stories overlap. there is history - my story witnessed by and intertwined with your story. we have story lines featuring the same characters and those “you had to be there” moments that give our days nuance and depth.

if i met you now, the timeline of events called my life would be PAST. but there are some for whom that timeline is also theirs, albeit from a different vantage point.

is it selfish to say that a long goodbye is painful because i lose some of me? a keeper of my story, your story - our story - ceases to be and well, no one else can experience that. every story needs a guardian. what happens when those who steward the parts of me that no one else was there for are gone? do i cease to exist? do they? do whole chapters disintegrate? do i reinvent myself, do i start in the middle of my story, do i talk only in present-tense, pretending there was no me before this moment?

in my own lower-case way, i am processing. i don’t have the stamina for a long goodbye, that burial of communal experience. i am settling for little goodbyes, small waves across parking lots, the lighthearted lie that “its not goodbye; its ‘see ya later!’”