Weepfest 2006...

I have always been really bad at saying goodbye. With endings. With big change.

I'm not entirely sure where that comes from. I've always assumed it has something to do with my father's death, because that was certainly the biggest change of my childhood. I remember that when we left Virginia to move west, about nine months after he died, I had a really hard time with it. I was really sad to leave all that I knew for the unknown, and remember fighting tears on the plane.

And every ending or farewell since then has been really hard for me to handle, even when I know the change is going to be good. I even remember getting weepy at my MIDDLE SCHOOL GRADUATION CEREMONY...! WTF? I hated middle school. It was, hands down, the most difficult time of my adolescence. Why was I sad to see it end?

Leaving San Diego was also really hard for me, even though I really wanted to get the hell out of that place, and had always wanted to live in San Francisco. But I was leaving behind a boyfriend I loved (my now-ex husband), some really great friends, and felt like I was abandoning my mother (it hadn't occurred to me that she might actually LIKE to have the house to herself...!) so I cried about that for weeks. I spent most of the long drive to SF crying.

And now, I've just said farewell to a very dear friend who's moving across the country. I've known him for ages, but we've only gotten close in the last five or six years or so. He's become a trusted confidant and excellent wine-tasting partner.

He's very excited about his move, and I'm happy to see him so happy, but I'm sad for me. Isn't that selfish?

(And this, coming on top of all the other emotional upset of recent weeks... well, that's the reason for the title of this little post.)