Saying goodbye to the people you love is nothing like the movies. There is no hand grasp lingering until the last possible second until you are forced to let go. No one chases after your car with tears streaming down their face. Goodbye seems to be temporary. Change is a strange circumstance. It is inevitable to hope things stay the same, a constant flow and a steady road always leading you home again. It’s when that road leads you somewhere new, somewhere unfamiliar that you realize things will never be the same again, and then this thing called life happens.
Saying goodbye to my lifelong friends was both the strangest and most complicated thing I have ever gone through. For years we had talked about how leaving would be the best thing to ever happen to us. So much has changed since then. It is funny to look back now and see how blind we were to how good we had it. We had the closest friendships, woven together by unforgettable nights, hours of complete laughter, inside jokes and songs that explained us perfectly.
Sometimes I will hear a song that places me right back in one of my memories. Songs like “Give It Up” by the Format immediately send me back to a crammed showroom screaming out the words to my favorite songs, my arms wrapped around my friends so tightly it seemed we were one. Moments like this are bliss, the moments when all you care about are the people around you and the music filling your ears.
After a long morning of checking my list twice and taking in every detail of my room, I backed my Jeep out of my driveway in Houston, Texas and headed north to Oklahoma. A strange mixture of excitement, sadness and butterflies filled my stomach. Passing through the streets that I knew so well and then leaving them all behind left me confused. I didn’t understand that soon new streets would signify home for me.
I started my playlist that would hopefully keep my mind off of my nerves throughout my seven-hour drive. The first song to start playing was “Give It Up” by The Format. Automatically the lyrics connected me to what I was going through at that exact time. “I made my way back down to the valley, right on past 83rd Street, that’s where we once belonged but I’m gone.”
The lyrics were right, I was gone, at least for now. All I had to remind me of things from the past years of my life were pictures, music, and maybe the occasional scent that sent my mind wandering. No more familiar landmarks like the local Sonic, the ditch behind the Shell station, or my high school that would suddenly remind me of all the times I had been there and what had happened.
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