I Hate Goodbyes

I realized fairly recently that I am the only one out of my current group of Paris friends who is going to be here all summer. Eloise leaves in July, Astral and Bea in late spring, and Ellie and Jane have already left.

A couple weeks ago, Ellie told us she was thinking about leaving her au pair family due to, ahem, creative differences. Sometimes I don't think I appreciate enough how lucky I got with my situation. Even if V was completely nuts, I still have my own apartment to hide out in. No little kids wandering in, no getting woken up at 7:30 in the morning, no judgment if I don't get home until 4 am. But Ellie was not so lucky and soon after she told us she was thinking about leaving, suddenly she was gone.

At this moment right now, I imagine that Jane is starting her first day at her new job. I vaguely knew that Jane was leaving around this time but I didn't really expect it to happen so soon. We sent her off with a farewell lunch of onion soup and waffles and ice cream on her last day. And just like that, another one bites the dust.

Is this like camp? You form these intense and close friendships for a couple months and then when the summer's over you never hear from them again? Like Cindy at Interlochen. I loved Cindy. She made chocolate chip banana cookies and wore men's pants and her mom knew one of the guys from Fallout Boy. And we promised we'd email and write letters and call and visit, and I haven't spoken to Cindy since I left Interlochen eight years ago.

Well that is just not happening here. I'm more grown up than that, surely. I don't just let friendships drop just because we no longer see each other every day!

So I'm planning a Grand Tour of the UK this summer. I will get to visit all the friends I met in Paris who moved back home, plus I get to see England which is the nationality of my soul. Or at least my sense of humor.

The tentative schedule looks like this. Early/mid July I go to London and stay with Bea. From there I take a train (or bus or something) up to Leeds to see Jane. Then on to Scotland to see Astral and Eloise. I'll finish near Bristol where Ellie lives. And then I'll try to convince her to go to Dublin with me because I've never been and I'm really trying to suck the marrow out of this living in Europe thing.

So this goodbye thing is really only a goodbye-for-now, since I'm going to see them when I definitely for sure no question about it go to England this summer. And who knows, maybe I'll like it so much I'll move there next...