Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations

by Jonny Sun

after I leave, we might not speak to each other for months, sometimes even years, knowing that we are always one message away from each other but the ease of that closeness means we can talk at any time, and so there is no specific urgency to do so, and so we put it off, and we put it off, and we put it off.

If my friendships don’t adhere to the expectations I’ve learned from TV, from media, from hearing stories about other peoples’ close friendships, then does it mean I don’t have any “real” friends? Or do those expectations just make me feel guilty, or make me feel like the relationships I have with the people I care about are not enough, are never enough, will never be enough?

Without a deadline, time feels too open to be peaceful. That freedom is crushing because it feels like looking at a big, blank canvas of usable time, and then being forced to solve how to use it best.

But on deadline days, and the days leading up to a deadline, it feels like all of that falls away—the deadline shuts everything else out—and I feel magically able to focus on the thing that is the most pressing, and with that comes a solace from the fears that I am not using my time to its greatest potential.

We cannot seem to escape the desire to feel productive with our time. I’m not sure if that’s by choice or by trauma, that this pressure to produce has been so engrained in us that our deepest fantasies are still tied to some idea of working on something.

When it’s with someone I care about, I love listening, and I always feel that listening is a better way than talking for me to express my love.

And when texting, I find myself wondering what the equivalent of eye contact is, to the extent that there can be one, or what the equivalent of active listening is.

You are allowed to mourn change, as well.

That you are no longer the person you used to be is, in my opinion, a good reason for mourning. It may be a cause for celebration, sometimes, too.

Home, then, I suppose, is simply in the ways you take a strange space and make it feel familiar. Sometimes that means putting your stuff in it. Sometimes that just means putting yourself in it and giving it time.