You have always been, in some strange way, good friends with impermanence.

You moved towns, moved countries, moved houses, moved jobs — always in motion, always arriving somewhere else, as if it was proof that life was happening. That growth was real only if there was a before and an after. One point to another.

And relationships, too, moved like that.

Friendships expanded the way lungs do — mundane and slowly, without you noticing, until one day you realize you have been breathing alongside your tribe, for years. Growing together. Almost at the same pace, oddly enough. Like parallel trains that keep matching speed.

But what never sat right was the idea of permanent impermanence.

The kind you don’t sign up for. The name of it even sounds too philosophical and absurd.

Like,

You think you will marry someone, and it will feel like the easiest thing — but it doesn’t.

You think your best friends will always be one call away, always within reach — and then suddenly, they aren’t.

People swear they will maintain things. That endings can still be good. That distance is only geography.

But distance is a thief, isn’t it?

Quiet. Taking without asking.

—

There was a season of your life where the goodbyes arrived too quickly, stacked one on top of another and another, until you couldn’t pretend not to notice anymore.

Goodbye to the field you had lived in for a decade.

Goodbye to friends entering new seasons of their own — and making it harder by doing so abroad.

Goodbye to the first place you could finally afford for yourself.

Goodbye to the relationship you thought would last forever.

Goodbye, even, to some people you believed would be a best friend — until boundaries became the only way to stay kind.

And the strange thing is, none of these goodbyes felt clean.