What’s in a goodbye?
When I step outside of a restaurant after sharing a night with friends, when I’m leaving a family gathering, or even when I walk out of my own house, I tend to always turn around and say goodbye.
When I say “goodbye until the next time”, it’s a solemn promise to myself and to others that I’ll look forward to the next time we cross paths. A subtle memento that I hold onto and wish to replace that last goodbye with another rememberable experience whether good or bad.
Recently, I’ve said goodbye a lot and for a different reason. From a public standpoint, I’ve always held myself together pretty well and given off that “life must be swell” attitude. But privately, my life has always been rather a struggle. Saying I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place would be an understatement.
However, at the same time, I’ve always feared the notion of truly expressing how much I’ve struggled mentally or emotionally. It takes mere seconds to recall other individuals I’ve known personally (and countless I have not) who are in much worse situations than myself. I have a house, my own company, a car, and a small collection of people I can call friends. Why do I have the right to be sad?
They always say hardship somehow finds it’s way back to childhood, and my experiences were definitely that. Growing up, I had very little friends. Throughout Elementary School and Middle School, I had a single individual I could call a “good friend”. My life at home was always rocky, my father rarely home due to his workaholic-ness and later to find out after his passing, was constantly out having affairs on my mother.
Due to this and many other factors (some of which to my own cause), my parents were distant from me. When I’d get home from school, there’s a reason I’d immediately gravitate towards my computer. I would spent countless hours on AIM, playing early multiplayer games, or otherwise teaching myself to program around the age of eight to nine (and to infinity and beyond). As progressing through life without any support from family or friends became more and more difficult, I had developed clinical depression and battled suicidal periods for several years. I was tossed around back and forth due to my parent’s eventual divorce (was better for everyone), but it caused me to lose the last bit of stability I had been grasping onto for dear life.
By the time I reached high school, I realized something as a seemingly unscalable wall rose from the ground in front of me. If I was to survive; if I was to be success, I needed to dedicate every last bit of myself towards my career and ensuring that by the time I was a young adult, I’d have enough means to at least not feel like I’d be hopeless.
[about three to four years passed which have been excluded from this]
So I did exactly that. Today, I sit on my bed in darkness, light from the hallway illuminating the corners of my bedroom, as I sit in the three-story house I purchased two years ago, two wonderful partners who I adore immensely a state away, a Tesla Model 3 reservation waiting to be fulfilled, and a small group of individuals I can call my close friends. But, something still feels .. wrong.
Remember when I had said goodbye and for a different reason? That’s because just a couple days ago I was moments from ending it all and had written out several paragraphs to by closest friends and loved ones that I was saying my final goodbye. At that moment, suicide was the only thing on my mind and the mere thought of how my goodbye was/would have impacted others began to trickle down my neck like my warm tears were.
I cried, I disappeared into the darkness of my room once more and I gave a call in desperation to my mother who I don’t speak to often for help. As soon as she had given me the okay to visit, I packed up my laptop, a change of clothes, and hopped into a Lyft to give them a visit.
I arrived torn and tear-stained. We walked down the pier a little and shared a pizza at a small family-owned shop we had both never been. We then continued to walk in the darkness of the night along the coast, the lampposts of the Manhattan Beach strand illuminating our way and the shadowy figures that passed. I spoke about the factors affecting my life right now and how I felt hopeless in making a difference. We walked and spoke for a very long time.
Today, I’m back home. I know the road ahead will still be difficult and that there are many challenges that will still continue to keep me from the right path. However, I’ve made a promise to myself yesterday, today, and tomorrow too (as well as every day after that!):
When I say goodbye, I want it to mean something. I want my final goodbye to be one of change. I want to be able to say those words and look back at a lifetime of changes I’ve made for the individuals around me, those far away, and around the world. When I graduated, I decided to devote my life towards being a humanitarian and spend as much time as possible towards creating companies, organizations, and projects that better other’s lives.
So, my promise is to fight this depression. To fight for myself and for those around me who struggle with the very same thing. The world around us is scary and there’s more happening than we can sometimes control, but that doesn’t mean we’re hopeless or don’t have a voice.
I want to stand up for those who feel voiceless, because I know in my darkest times when I didn’t have anything to light my way, all I wanted was to know my voice mattered and that I could make a difference out there as well.
Love yourself.
