“Practice makes perfect right? Wrong. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
At 9 years old, I sat front row in a college public speaking class. My heart was practically beating out of my chest, I got to go to COLLEGE with my big sister! I had picked out the perfect outfit that day (one that was ensured to make me look older and more mature, like a college girl, of course). I sat there, proudly wearing the “Faith’s Little Sister” label as the professor lectured.
Almost 13 years later, I don’t remember many details from that day, but I will never forget something my sister’s professor said: “Practice makes perfect right? Wrong. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
That is our culture: improvement. I understood for the first time that day how important learning, practice and growth were. I vowed to spend every day of my life working hard and getting better every time I tried something new.
Until now.
I want to stop getting better at one thing: goodbyes.
In this past year I’ve said goodbye more times than I can count.
On September 29th, I said goodbye to all my best friends. Hug, after hug, after hug, I balled my eyes out as the procession of people walked out my front door.
On October 3rd I said goodbye to my parents. It broke my heart and I cried until my eyes were so swollen I could barely see. It took everything in me to not turn and run right back to them.
On November 5th I said goodbye to the sweetest little family in Manipur, India. I sniffled though our last breakfast together and spent the bus ride to the airport wiping away lingering tears.
On December 4th I said goodbye to my forever family in Nepal. It felt like saying goodbye to my parents all over again. My heart is still in that little purple house.
On December 31st I said goodbye to my dear friends in Vietnam, and as fiercely as I loved them, goodbye seemed less sad that time around.
I’ve said goodbye to 5 countries since then, 5 homes, 5 families, and those goodbyes eventually stopped being hard. My heart grew numb to “goodbye,” and as the months passed on, I thought I was just getting better at them.
Is there such as thing? Or was I just getting better at not getting attached? Was I just getting better at appearing like I’m invested, while in all reality only putting in a small piece of my heart because I knew what was coming? Subconsciously I knew that if I put my whole heart in, I wouldn’t get it all back, and that’s painful.
I don’t want to get better at saying goodbye.
I need to reverse the damage that my numbness has caused.
I want goodbye to hurt every time. I want to be so relentlessly invested in the lives around me that I have to tear my heart away when goodbye comes. I want to fiercely love people so there’s no other option than for my heart to break when we have to say goodbye. I want to leave pieces of me everywhere I go, and I want to take some pieces of people too.
The race asks us to say goodbye every month. It’s hands down the hardest part of this whole thing for me. I hate goodbyes. Somewhere along the way I started protecting myself from them. Well I don’t want to anymore.
I want to feel every goodbye. I want to let all of it break my heart because every laugh, every hug, every meal, everyday, it’s all added up to something beautiful. And that beauty deserves to be felt and mourned when it’s over.
I don’t have many goodbyes left, but I vow to make them count. So I’m saying goodbye to good goodbyes.
I refuse to get better.
