On Saying Goodbye Before It’s Time: When I Find Myself Closing Off

“I was thinking,” my friend started, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Yes?” I said. I took another sip of water and nodded encouragingly.

“I could leave a few months earlier than I had been planning, visit some people, and travel a little before settling down over there.”

“That sounds like a…” I hesitated and put the glass of water on the counter with a clink. “Sensible idea,” I finally concluded, while mentally calculating the months I had left with her. They seemed to be dwindling rapidly, her announcement having drastically shortened the time left.

Later that day, I stared out the window and once again replayed our conversation in my mind. Time will fly by so fast, I told myself, sighing. And then… I paused, reality hitting me full in the face. All three of my closest friends would be living in other countries! Some of them would be halfway across the globe. Leaving me with no close friends, I concluded, turning from the window.

But on the lurch of throwing a pity party, I stopped in my tracks, reality hitting me in the face once again.

“She’s not gone yet,” I said out loud. Awed by the simple, mind-blowing statement, I repeated it, more firmly this time. “She’s not gone yet. And she won’t be gone for a while.”

I had once again caught myself living in the future. On the inside, I had already started saying “goodbye.”

An Unusual TCK Life 

My TCK life doesn’t follow the status quo. (Whose does? …but that’s a different story.) Yes, I grew up in different cultures, but the different cultures were all lived in the same place. When it came to moving, I wasn’t the one to leave. My friends were. For as long as I can remember, there were always people around me, moving away.

I’ve never liked change and I’ve never liked goodbyes, so moving has always been high up on my list of “things I don’t like.” But it seemed to affect me more when I was younger. My reaction to people moving away changed over time.

When one of my best friends moved away when I was 10, I cried about it. A lot. I have a whole journal filled with my thoughts about it. Yes, a whole journal.

When a similar thing happened when I was 15, I was sad about it too. And I cried, but not as much.

A few years later, when, once again, one of the many people moving away was a close friend, I was sad. But I didn’t cry. This is life, I told myself. People come and people go. There’s nothing you can do about it. So, save yourself the tears.

Emotional Numbing

I decided that if I banned the sad thoughts or stuffed them into a dark corner, it wouldn’t hurt as much. Maybe if I stop caring now, the actual goodbye will be easier.

But here’s the thing – in banning the “bad emotions,” I stopped feeling all emotions.

Two years ago, I noticed it for the first time, and after mulling over it for a while, I tried to describe it to a friend. “I just stopped feeling. Somewhere along the way, I decided that if I turned off all feelings, it would hurt less. Sure, I don’t feel joy. But I don’t feel pain either, so that seems to make it worth it.”

“That’s… intense!” my friend replied.

Yet if I were being honest, it wasn’t worth it. I just grew numb. And the longer I lived in this numbness, the more I realised that this was actually an unhealthy coping mechanism.

I stumbled across a quote the other day that captures this well: “If we numb the dark, we numb the light. If we take the edge off pain and discomfort, we are, by default, taking the edge off joy, love, belonging.” – Brené Brown

That was it. In short, I believed that it would save me the pain later if I said goodbye now, when in reality I wasn’t saving myself pain. Instead, I was robbing myself of a whole lot of different feelings – a part of life that God created for our good.

The Root of the Problem

After I had realised that I had been numbing my emotions, it took me a while to feel again. Interestingly, the first feeling I felt was sadness, when a long-distance friend left to go home after a visit. Even though the feeling itself wasn’t nice, I was happy to be feeling again.

But here’s what I discovered along the way: The root of the problem was fear. Fear, the old enemy. I was emotionally closing off because I was afraid. Afraid of the difficult emotions. Afraid of the pain. Afraid of having to deal with what I thought might be happening in the future.

But the God of the Bible is the God of love, not fear. He says over and over in His Word that we are not meant for a life of fear. So many passages show that His very character is the reason why we needn’t be afraid (e.g. Ps. 27:1; Ps. 121:1–2; 1 John 4:16–18).

It’s hard. You can’t flip the switch from not feeling because of fear to beating the lies and daring to feel. It’s a process and it’s okay to be in that process.

Daring to Feel

I still have a tendency to numb my feelings when a lot of things are happening around me. To avoid being overwhelmed, I just stuff everything away and go back to my “say goodbye now; it will save you the pain later” mantra.

Just the other day, I once again caught myself neglecting my journal (writing things down helps me process), praying for people around me but not myself (because I didn’t want to sort through the thoughts in my mind), and throwing myself into work in order to avoid the nagging voice telling me to stop and feel.

I found myself once again believing the lies fed by fear.

But guess what works against lies? Truth. It doesn’t always change the situation radically from one day to the next, but the more I speak truth to myself, the more I start believing that it actually is the truth it claims to be.

When I find myself acting upon the fear inside of me, I tell myself that knowing God means that I can live free of fear.

When I start growing numb, I remind myself that closing off emotionally will also stop me from feeling joy.

And when I catch myself saying goodbye before it’s time, I choose to fight the lies and fear with truth and confidently tell myself that I was meant to live in the “today” and leave tomorrow up to my all-powerful God.

My friend will still be moving away, and that day keeps coming closer. Chances are, many more friends will be coming and going over the next years. But as difficult as it is, I want to emotionally not block off on the inside, but instead let myself feel the emotions – both the hard and the good.