Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations

by Jonny Sun

You can’t outrun sadness because sadness is already everywhere. Sadness isn’t the visitor, you are.

And in the morning, all this stuff reanimates its owner, reminding them of themself. And when I wake up around my friend’s stuff, it feels like now their stuff is animating me as well. Only, I’m a bit different now. I wake up, not with my own stuff reinvigorating and reassembling “Me” but with my friend’s stuff, so it feels like I wake up as them, a little bit. And then I start the day—it’s so rare to start the day not as yourself—as they do.

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.

don’t begrudge anyone for not responding and not getting back to me, because I do that, too. I understand other things get in the way, or that sometimes, the burden of configuring a response that encompasses everything that needs to be said is too great to face at the moment.

The good thing that was Really Happening didn’t fall to pieces or get taken away from me or get crossed out by something I did or something bad happening the following day, or the following month, or in the following years.

You’re in egg world now. Everything is eggs.

Perhaps after a life of working to no end with no promised outcomes, what we think we want more than anything is to escape into this fantasy that something reliable will happen when we put our time into it.

Suddenly, I feel like I am in conversation with someone else, over this very specific topic of interest, only this conversation doesn’t happen with a rapid and ongoing exchange of words. It happens with one statement, and then half a millennia later, another one.

One thing that makes me really adore someone is seeing that they also use listening as a way to convey love. It is one of the reasons I am friends with Zach, because this is a belief that we both share about conveying attention and presence,

and all I can find myself thinking is, it cannot be by coincidence that “decide” and “decode” are only one letter apart.

And in working together, I am not questioning what the other person is getting out of interacting with me at any given moment. If I am able to contribute my time, my energy, my attention, and my productivity to something, I am adding some tangible value to this friendship, right? I’m worth being friends with, right? I’m not wasting their time, right? And if they care about the work, and I am part of the working, by extension, doesn’t that mean they care about me?

every time I talk to my therapist, I’ve started noting down what he does—the ways he responds to what I say, the kinds of questions he asks me—that make me feel validated and listened to. I do this in order to learn how to be a better therapy friend. And I think I’ve worked hard on being a nonjudgmental, supportive, and active listener to the extent that this is the only role of friendship I feel comfortable in. I am good at molding myself into being a listener that someone else wants around, who exists to provide support and affirmation. In this way, I can be . . . helpful, I guess? Or useful?

definitely don’t think about how you have no consistent version of yourself because you can only construct who you are in the context of another person, that you can only be “someone” by being who you think the other person would like to have around, so you are really no one when you are by yourself because you cannot be who you yourself would like to have around, and so there is no you, and instead please just be a normal person, one single normal person, not some Ungraspable Multitude, maybe just this once, on your own birthday, please. But whose birthday did all these people come to celebrate? Each of them came to celebrate a different person. So how can they all be at the same one party? And how can you be all these different people, all at once, all at the same time?

When the cat is not in the box, when they are of no use to the man as he thinks of other experiments to conduct, does the cat find any fulfillment in simply being a cat? Or do they spend their every waking moment waiting to get back into the box, to be part of something they have been told all their life is more important than themself?

Without the man to tell them so, does the cat worry that they will never know what state they are in again? Or can the cat learn to declare for themself their own state?

And if the cat has kittens—if the cat should want to have kittens, and if the cat does have kittens—can the cat allow the kittens to simply exist as they are, in the state that they are in? Or does the cat hold their kittens a little too tightly, for a little too long, whispering into their little kitten ears until it drowns out their own thoughts, “you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive”?

Taking the time to be around nature is helping me understand that things can just exist, being what they are, and it’s just each of us that gives them some sort of meaning.

The act of taking care of plants, every day, over the courses of months and years, has helped show me that life takes time, but with time, life, for the most part, seems to generally know what to do.

One thing that has made me less anxious about talking to people is focusing on this notion that a conversation is a gift of somebody’s time and attention.

On MSN, though, there was proof the conversation happened—it was written down! If I forgot what someone said, or if I was worried that someone didn’t like me, I could just scroll up and look at all the words we wrote out to each other and find comfort in having some sort of tangible evidence that we had given all this time and attention to each other previously.

And that made it feel like what we were doing was much more than just talking. In writing all these words together, over years and years, it felt like we were collaborating, like we had written a friendship into being.

I think a lot of pressure gets put on making things “for something” or “for some reason” and the pressure of “but why?” and “but who’s this for?” and “is it good enough?” and “it’s a waste of time and energy!” and “why don’t you do something productive instead?” and I think that all of this removes the importance and value of making things for the ones who are making it, because maybe the ones who are making the thing are the ones who might need it the most.

The playlist for my funeral is 252 songs long now, and I feel like it’s not done yet. I feel like it’s still missing pieces, or that I haven’t found the perfect single song that I love more than any of these other songs that would render my list obsolete. And I think I want to keep adding to it. And I think that means, that this is some sure sign, that I want to be alive.

But sometimes I see that same type of tree in different cities, in different countries. It makes me feel at peace. It reminds me that I once found a home where that tree grew, and so if that same tree can grow somewhere else, perhaps so can I.

If happiness visits, let yourself let it in. Don’t judge it, don’t give it a side eye. It’s not trying to trick you. Trust that it’s here to see you. It comes too rarely for you to ask yourself if you deserve it.

Just sit next to it for as long as it sits next to you. You can at least let yourself do that. Then, let it join the other happinesses that may be visiting you in that same moment. And when it wants to leave, let it leave. You can’t force it to stay. It’s going to leave regardless.

And even though this specific happiness might not come back, know that it has to leave for it to visit you again.

I am always sad when I think about happinesses leaving, but I have started to understand that sadnesses can leave, too. I have been trying lately to welcome sadness like a bird that’s come to perch on a branch nearby for a moment. I try to just sit quietly and observe its details, to try to understand what is unique and special and different about this bird, to try to take note of what features I can use to identify it before it flies away. I find a little bit of happiness—or maybe, at least, comfort—in observing these sadnesses, and in identifying them with enough resolution that I am able to recognize them when they approach.

And today just happens to be a day in the spring, so the tree is covered in its own flowers, blooming as if to say, Don’t worry about me. I’m just doing tree stuff. Like always. Worry about yourself, maybe. Stop moving around so much, maybe. It’s making me tired. Just sit still in the sun for a couple weeks. Trust me, it’ll feel nice.

Every goodbye after our first should remind us that we’ve done this before. Instead of Goodbye, I’d like to start saying Goodbye, again. See you later cannot be promised, but Goodbye, again reminds us that we’ve done this before. And after the last time, at least, we both came back.