A degree in goodbyes

If saying goodbye was a qualification, I’d be working on my thesis.


The first significant goodbye I had to face was to my older sister when I was 11 years old. I botched it. When the doctors took away her life support I didn’t understand how you could just switch off a person. In the months that followed I woke myself up in a panic almost every night. My chest was tight and my heart raced as I tried to comprehend the reality of never seeing my sister again. I felt angry and cheated. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t get to say goodbye.

I later found out that saying goodbye didn’t have an expiry date, and I’ve said goodbye to Sam a hundred times since.


High school gave me a lot of more opportunities to say goodbye, this time to my friends.

Losing Sam left an emptiness in my world that I filled with friends. At 15 years old, the only thing I cared about in life was the friendships I had. For all the love I had for my friends I put a lot of pressure on them. I was a loyal friend and I would have done anything for the group of girls who got me through high school but I also smothered them. I relied on them to be my friends, my family and my therapists when they were just children. My expectations of friendship meant that I put them on a pedestal and when those expectations were let down, it broke my heart.


The truth is, the goodbyes I said in high school were my fault. I had learnt from my mother that anyone who let you down was a toxic to your life and should be removed. Forgiveness was not in my mothers dictionary and I didn’t understand what it really meant until well into university. Throughout my high school years I exercised a lot of expectation and blame and it didn’t occur to me until my 20’s that in reality, I was the toxic one.

“Friends come in and out of our life like bus boys in a restaurant” - Stand by me.


I met my first boyfriend (lets call him T) when I was 16 and we could not have come from more different worlds. T lived a very sheltered life and didn’t know anywhere near the kind of pain I knew at the age of 16. Words can’t express how badly I wanted to fit into his world, but mine kept catching up with me. I suffered from social anxiety and a deep set fear of losing people close to me which I dealt with by pushing people out of my lives before they got the chance to contribute any more damage. This included T. I frequently told myself that I was damaged goods and I didn’t belong with someone like T, his life was perfect and the world was his oyster; my life was scattered and I was always waiting for the next disaster that was around the corner.

Like star crossed lovers, T and I would spent the next 5 years trying to say goodbye to each other.


When I was 17 I said goodbye to my innocence in more ways than one. When my auntie was stabbed by her ex boyfriend I said goodbye to any ideas I still held onto that people were good and the world was a beautiful place. The fact that she survived took nothing away from the hard truth that someone had attempted to kill my loved one. I remember standing in the middle of the road as she lay in a pool of her own blood, ambulance lights flashed and my mother yelled at a police officer. I never saw the world through the same eyes ever again. The world was ugly and people were monsters.


I was 18 when my mother decided not to be a mum anymore. She sold everything she owned and brought a plane to the north Island. She felt it was time to put herself first after giving up 21 years of her life raising children. When phone calls became few and far between I realised my days of having mum in my life might be over and I didn’t realise until years later that this was probably the moment that I said goodbye to her.


Family is a oddity to me. Though my family has been untraditional for as long as I can remember, I’ve always been able to find family when i’ve needed it. The ability to create my own family has been a silver lining on a lot of dark clouds and T’s family is an example of this. I loved his family almost as much as I loved him which is why shattered my world so much that every time I said goodbye to T, I had to say goodbye to them too. I feel blessed to have ever been a part of their lives and for the acceptance and love that they showed me. I miss them every day and just like he does, they forever have a part of my heart.



Goodbyes come in different forms, and at the ripe age of 20 I considered myself quite seasoned in the art of saying all kinds of goodbyes. Experienced as I was, nothing could have prepared me for the next goodbye. Having young parents made me incredibly lucky because I was raised in part by my nana. Nana to this day has been my greatest inspiration and I owe a lot to her for the person I’ve become. As my biggest supporter I couldn’t imagine ever living without her and when passed away I didn’t know how I could go on. Anxiety threatened me every day leading up that goodbye and I became more comfortable with the panic attacks than without them. A nurse in the hospice had told us Nana was in a lot of pain but there was something stopping her from letting go. Sometimes, the nurse told us, people just need to be given permission from their loved ones before they can feel peace and let go. I sat with Nana and read her a letter I had prepared earlier so that I didn’t miss out anything I wanted to tell her. I didn’t want any regrets this time.


I thanked her. I promised to make her proud every day for the rest of my life and I told her to have faith in the beautiful family she had raised with so much love at that we would look after each other. I told her it was okay to go. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. My warmest memories are centred around my Nana and I said goodbye to my childhood that day. I said goodbye to any hope I had left that things would get better and I said goodbye to the indestructible image I had of my father as I watch him grieve for his mum.


Nana had been a source of strength for me and I had to believe, like she did, that I could find that strength in my myself. Somehow I did and I carried on my journey of goodbyes.


Meanwhile at 21, T and I were still making attempts to say goodbye to each other. Love was never something we lacked in our complicated relationship but we both knew loving each other couldn’t always be enough. Our hearts might have wanted a future together but our worlds rejected it and when push came to shove, we couldn’t fit our love into the different lives we wanted. I’d gotten used to my break ups with T but until the last time I had never believed it was really over. When I said goodbye to T I said goodbye to love and the age old fairytale that it might overcome anything.


My 22nd year saw 3 more goodbyes. The first one to my grandmother. My mothers foster mum represented my silver lining and the very fact that you find family everywhere. The way my grandmother loved my mum as if she were her own gave me hope for my unconventional family. I said goodbye and I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in, that everything would be okay.


It didn’t work.


A week later my young transgender cousin chose to end her life. I remember the way my heart sank into my stomach when I was told. I was weeks away from moving to London with my best friend and I was battling with a fear that if i turned my back on my family now then everything might fall apart. While I accepted her decision to leave a world that was so unkind to her, I feared for the people she left behind. I wrote a letter to S…


Beautiful girl,


I don't want to say goodbye. I guess life doesn't always let us have what we want. I want to say so many things to you. Like that I've always loved you, so so much. That I'm sorry I didn't keep in touch as well as I should have. Mainly S, I want to say thank you. For being such a beautiful little light in my life, for the memories, for letting me be a part of your life and watch you grow into one of the most incredible woman. My life is, and will always be richer for having known you.


I don't want to say goodbye, but I know I am in an elite group of people who are so incredibly lucky to have known such a strong, beautiful individual. And there won't ever be a day in my life where I am not carrying you in my heart. Rest easy gorgeous girl and know that everything is going to be okay now, and nothing is ever going to hurt you again - and know that it heals my heart to know that too.


With all the love in my heart
Your cousin, Gessica xxxx (May 23rd 2015)

I didn’t realise until I said goodbye to S that all the goodbyes I’d said in my life were to people who had given me a huge amount happiness and that I was lucky to have had so many things in my life that were so hard to say goodbye to. Having a degree in goodbyes is a testament to the relationships that have shaped me and the people who have made me the person behind this blog.


I said my last goodbye at 22 to my best friend. H had been my best friend for 4 years for the most part we were inseparable. When we went travelling our friendship was faced with considerable turbulence and despite how hard I tried to hold onto it, the damage that was done was irreparable. Accepting that a friendship that had been such huge part of my life had run its course broke my heart again. In the end i trusted that i should’t hold on to something that was only making me miserable and with a heavy heart, I said goodbye to my best friend. ​

My friendship with H was a sisterhood that brought a lot of love into my life, and not wanting to ever let go of those memories, I let go of the sisterhood before it became clouded with hurt and hate. If you’re heading this H, it wasn’t easy. I did it because it would hurt more to watch something I loved so much burn out completely.


I have a degree in goodbyes and I’m working on my thesis. I live in constant fear of the next goodbye but I guess thats the price I pay for the incredible people in my life.


It IS better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all.
I promise you this.