The End is the Beginning...But it Hurts Nonetheless

            When something good is over, it sometimes is unspeakably sad.  Usually, it needs to be finished, it’s time to move on.  But, that doesn’t change the fact that part of you came from it, and that—at least in part—it will be missed.  Some things are missed only shortly, and after a few days you find yourself completely over it.  But there are other things, and these things leave an ache behind.  You want them to come back, to last a little longer.  You know you won’t be back, and it hurts.

            The worst part is when there are people you care about, people you love.  You know that the odds are heavily against you ever seeing them again.  Maybe some of them, you’ll remain close to; you’ll do things together, and stay in touch.  But most—while they have touched you deeply in one way or another—you will never see again.

            Even in this day and age, with the internet connecting everyone, it just isn’t the same.  People who you have the strongest friendship with, you grow apart from.  You still love them.  They’re still your friends.  But, you just don’t talk to them much, if at all.  That’s just the way it is.

            When you’ve been truly happy someplace, and learned a lot from it, those places are the hardest to leave.  You don’t want to let go—of that place or those people—because you know that you belong, and you know sometimes that it shouldn’t be over, not yet.  Those times are the hardest.  Goodbye is the hardest word, either to say or to hear.

            The uncertainty is almost as hard as the ending.  You know that something new will come, but you don’t know what.  You never know what it will be like, if it will even begin to fill the emptiness that the old thing left behind.  You worry, and you’re a little scared.  We’re always scared of what we don’t know.

            The other uncertainty is the one about your friends.  You know you want to stay in touch, to keep your friendship alive.  With some, you know that won’t happen.  It’s sad, but it’s ok; those people were amazing and you love them, but they’re only a little of who you are, and memory is enough.  But then there are the people who are so much a part of you that you don’t know who you would be without them, and you don’t want to find out.  Those are the people who know your secrets, your fears, your strengths, maybe not all of them, but enough.

            You love them.  Plain and simple.  Those people are the ones who might as well be family.  The people you’d do anything to protect.  You’re terrified of losing them, because you know how often that happens, how easy it is.  Sometimes, that fear is enough to keep it from happening…and sometimes not.  Either way, it hurts.  But, that’s the cost of love; and it’s worth it.  Always.

            I heard a great quote the other day; I can’t remember it exactly, but it was something like this,

“Family is not those with whom you share your blood, but rather those for whom you would shed your blood.”  I believe it was from a Hannibal Lecter film, but I’m not sure.  Whatever the source, the point remains.  There are many I would call my family, many for whom I would gladly shed my blood.  I don’t want to lose them.  I’m afraid I might, at least a few of them.

–The Shadow Knight