Weird Goodbyes - On The National, Saying Goodbye, and Letting Go
In writing, I fear I may fall victim to, at times, placing entirely too much pressure on myself.
And I am certain that I may fall victim to doing this in other avenues of my life as well, but in writing, what I have found, especially as of late—this year, certainly, and even perhaps some of last—is that unless the words find their way out perfectly within what could be called a first draft, there will be a quite a struggle in my efforts to overcome, or workaround.
Of course, the trick with all of this is to make it appear effortless to the reader. In the end, nobody other than myself has to know how many versions or drafts of something are littering the computer, or how many words, or lines, or expressions found their way onto the intimidating blank page only to have been erased in moments of reconsideration or doubt.
In writing, I feel I may fall victim to, at times, placing entirely too much pressure on myself. Sometimes this all comes very easily—easier than initially anticipated—that ease, often a surprise, is always welcomed in the end. Sometimes it is not as easy—not impossible by any means, but challenging enough that it takes, perhaps, a little more time, or requires slightly more thought or maneuvering on my part, to truly find my way into what I want to say, and how I want to say it.
The rhythm, or pacing, is eventually found.
You want the words to tumble out onto the page the way they might sound when they are swirling around, untethered, as thoughts in your head. You want them to be perfect—to make sense, to be well organized, to be immediately poignant or profound, the moment your fingers press down on the keyboard.
This is not always the case.
In writing, I fear I may fall victim to, at times, placing entirely too much pressure on myself.
The piece then, in that pressure, more or less begins to buckle under the weight of its own ambitions—or my ambitions for it, before it has even been given a chance to develop.
And I find that as of late, I, perhaps, for myriad reasons, have entirely too much on my mind—and my mind, as of late, slightly addled by not only the too much that is on it, but also an actual fog, but here, specifically, within this moment, I find I have a been, and still am, thinking about the band The National—where they have come 21 years into their career, and where they might be going in the immediate future with the release of a new album seemingly imminent—not this year, but allegedly in 2023.
I find I am thinking about the idea of how we choose to say goodbye to one another, and what may, or may not, make those goodbyes weird.
I find I am wondering why, sometimes, we want those goodbyes to last longer than others.
In writing, I fear I may fall victim to, at times, placing entirely too much pressure on myself.
The piece more or less beginning to buckle under the weight of its own ambitions—or my ambitions for it, before it has even been given a chance.
At one point, this was going to be about a lot of things.
I am uncertain how many of those things it will be about in the end.
*
The first time I recognized Matt Berninger’s technique of repurposing specific song lyrics would have been roughly 15 years ago.
And this is not a thing that Berninger—The National’s lead vocalist and principal lyricist—does much of anymore, if at all, but there was undoubtedly a time within the early days of the band where specific phrases, or lines, would be used in one song, and then might turn up elsewhere, later on, creating a bit of a callback, or a self-referential nod to the listener.
The creation of a throughline that connected one song to another.
The first time I recognized this songwriting device, or technique, was with the line, “Sometimes you get up and bake a cake, or something. Sometimes you just stay in bed.” Famously tucked into the second verse of the swirling, ominous, at times misinterpreted “Racing Like A Pro,” from the band’s breakout 2007 album Boxer, the line originated in what I understand now to be a crass, early demo recording that I originally came across in 2006.
Then called “Minor Stars of Rome,” this chintzy demo recording—shares a majority of its lyrics with the finished song, but there are a few differences to take note of as well (the repetition of the expression “You’re miles behind your sister” is lyric that has stuck with me for a long time)—was the band’s contribution to a compilation CD included in an issue of the Dave Eggers affiliated literary magazine The Believer. And the song itself, like many of The National’s earliest b-sides and rarities, made its way onto the fledgling mp3 blogs I regularly read in 2005 and 2006.
And it is this era of The National where Berninger did the most, or most noticeable, repurposing of specific lyrics or phrasings—the coda to “Slow Show” perhaps being the most apparent, with its direct callback to the bizarre, penultimate track from their ramshackle self-titled debut album from the year 2001; or the expression “keep it upstairs,” used as the title to a b-side recorded during the sessions for Alligator, then finding itself used again as a key element, three years later, in an energetic b-side from the Boxer sessions, “Blank Slate.”
The expression “blank slate” itself, again, used in the extremely compelling, early, and dizzying demo version of “Slow Show.”
Within the last decade-plus of The National’s output, and Berninger’s lyricism, the only other time that immediately comes to mind where he employed this device in his songwriting is on High Violet, which is arguably the band’s finest moment.
In the moody, evocative, and sensually creeping “Lemonworld,” he mumbles the line, “See you inside watching swarms on TV—living and dying in New York, it means nothing to me.” A version of this line is also present in the surprisingly jaunty and rollicking b-side from the album, “Wake Up Your Saints”—he switches the tone completely, though, and swaps the East Coast for the West by singing, “But when I look in the window, I see girls on TV—living and dying in L.A. and it means nothing to me.”
And this is not a thing that Berninger does much of anymore, if at all, so when familiar ideas, or imagery, appears within a new song by The National, I have to presume that it is not purely coincidental.
*
Around a month ago, a new essay by Hanif Abdurraqib was published in The New York Times Magazine—titled “The Art of Disappearance,” it is primarily an exploration of the mystique surrounding the idiosyncratic folk singer Connie Converse, who disappeared from Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1974 and has not been seen or heard from since.
If Converse is still alive, somewhere in the world, she is just shy of 100 years old, though most people familiar with her, and her story, believe that she is no longer living.
And I say the essay is primarily about Converse—her life, the music she recorded in the 1950s that eventually was released through a boutique label in 2009, her disappearance, and the mythology surrounding it all, because it is, of course, a piece that is about a number of other things as well, including the act of exiting.
“The problem—or at least a problem, I’ve been told,” the essay begins, “Is that I am not very concerned about being missed upon any of my exits….”
“I think about this often, and if there is a remedy for it. I read the sometimes long, sprawling announcements people make when they leave or take breaks from social media platforms, or I watch someone announce that they are departing on the way out of a crowded party, and I sometimes find myself puzzled by the practice,” Aburraqib continues.
“I slip out of parties unannounced. I make up excuses for why I didn’t make the rounds, or say goodbye. I see the concerned text, I tell myself I’ll reply later, and sometimes I do.”
I have had a lot on my mind as of late, and among those things, I find I am thinking about the idea of how we choose to say goodbye to one another.
In many situations, I, too, am not very concerned about being missed upon an exit, but what I find I am actually concerned with, more than anything else, at least within these circumstances or situations, is the act of the exit itself.
The act of the exit, and the urgency with which I may need to take it.
The urgency it may not, despite my best efforts, be happening with.
At one point, this was going to be about a lot of things.
I am uncertain how many of those things it will be about in the end.
*
Now approaching a decade after the release of Trouble Will Find Me, it is, of course, retrospectively easy to view it as an album made by a band that found itself at a bit of a crossroads in terms of understanding what to do, or where to go next following roughly six years of unexpected and then unprecedented commercial success.
Trouble Will Find Me is by no means The National’s worst album—but it is also not their best moment, or their most focused and thoughtful as a whole. It contains some of my favorite songs within their output (“Pink Rabbits” and “I Need My Girl”), but it also is home to some of their least compelling, borderline “middle of the road” material. It is the sound, and again it is easy to recognize this nine years after the fact, of a band that had not exactly gotten “too big, too quickly,” but it is the sound of a band working through growing pains—reaching a specific and intended peak (High Violet) and in doing that, wrote the final chapter in what they had spent the first decade of their career working toward.
And in finishing that chapter, the album Trouble Will Find Me operates in a strange musical purgatory. It is the sound of a band that had perhaps become restless within itself, and weren’t exactly phoning it in at all, but were continuing to tread the water of what they had been doing, and had worked so well for them up until that point, but were not yet ready to venture out any further into the deep end.
Five years ago, Sleep Well Beast was not so much a complete sonic departure for The National. Still, it did come as a bit of a surprise in terms of the band beginning to, in earnest, incorporate textural elements of warm, antiquated synthesizers, and glitchy, dilapidated sounding drum machines into their already dense and often packed aesthetic. But as surprising, and at times a little disorienting to hear, as it might have sounded in 2017, it was really the next logical step forward for the band in terms of what to do, or where to go with their sound.
It just took them a little bit of time to figure out the right balance in how to walk the line between the lush, stirring orchestral accompaniment they began to favor, and the dramatic, stark indie rock theatrics they developed somewhere in the mid to late 2000s, with this sudden embrace and interest of electronic-inspired sounds.
And there were moments, of course, on both Sleep Well Beast, and its follow-up, 2019’s I Am Easy to Find, where when they found that balance, and it worked, it really worked, with startling and often emotionally impactful outcomes. There were also moments that were certainly not unlistenable, but the results were noticeably and subjectively less successful in their execution.
“Weird Goodbyes” features guest vocals from Justin Vernon, a long-time friend of the band, as well as a regular collaborator in a number of capacities, and it is one of those aforementioned songs—a moment where the balance between the elements really works, thriving in the space created in the convergence of the moody, sweeping indie rock aesthetic the band still hangs onto, the somber, creeping string arrangement that cuts through the entire piece, and the skittering, glitchy sounding electronic elements.
And on “Weird Goodbyes,” The National sound more confident than they ever have before, working within the space created by that convergence.
*
In writing, I fear I may fall victim to placing entirely too much pressure on myself, with the piece more or less beginning to buckle under the weight of its own ambitions—or my ambitions for it, before it has even been given a chance.
At one point, I was confident this was going to be about a lot of things.
I am uncertain how many of those things it will be about in the end.
It had not really occurred to me at all until I began working on this that the expression, the “Irish Goodbye,” could possibly be considered offensive, or at the very least insensitive—though, of course, it could. However, even if there are some who might believe it to be, a cursory glance at the results from a search of “is Irish Goodbye offensive” reveals some contention over how derogatory the expression itself might be, who, if anyone, might find it offensive, and what, if we can even surmise, the etymology behind it is.
I wish I could, but I don’t remember the first time I heard the expression the “Irish Goodbye.” There was a point, recently, before the ambition of this began causing what I had originally written to start buckling shortly after the words appeared on the screen, that I found an old ABC News piece from 2014. The article itself is mostly about etiquette, and how etiquette experts still “frown” upon the act of the “Irish Goodbye,” or as it is more colloquially called now, “ghosting” in a social setting.
Within the article, the author also lazily tries to trace the history of the expression “the Irish Goodbye,” citing quotations from a somewhat dubious in appearance website, that implies the phrase originated with the mass and often sudden emigration of the Irish to American during the Potato famine in the mid-1800s—though I am uncertain if any of this is accurate.
A similar possible reasoning behind the expression, though this is most certainly speculative, is that “emigrants left for America without telling anyone what they were up to, thereby saving themselves sad, protected goodbyes and leave-taking.”
The expression itself, at least in the contention from one pocket of the internet, claims the very notion of the “Irish Goodbye” is a misnomer—that the Irish are just as capable of long, drawn-out goodbyes as Americans are.
The term, similar to others I discovered in the same ABC News piece that I was not at all familiar with, like “Dutch Leave” and “French Exit,” are perhaps all firmly rooted in the same unfortunate ethnocultural stereotyping—that people from other cultures are so rude, or so inconsiderate, that they would do something so deplorable like leaving a social gathering without properly saying goodbye.
And that for many, the idea of leaving a social gathering without properly saying goodbye is considered to be truly that inconsiderate or that rude.
“I slip out of parties unannounced. I makeup excuses for why I didn’t make the rounds, or say goodbye,” Abdurraqib writes in his essay about the art of disappearance. “I see the concerned text, I tell myself I’ll reply later, and sometimes I do.”
I have had a lot on my mind as of late, and among those things I find I am thinking about is the idea of how we choose to say goodbye to one another.
And I have realized that in many situations, or circumstances, I, too, am not very concerned about being missed upon an exit, but what I find I am actually concerned with is the act of the exit itself.
The act of the exit, and the urgency with which I have, in the past, most certainly taken it with.
*
The way he depicts otherwise seemingly uninteresting interpersonal, domestic scenes is among the things that I continually find most interesting, or admirable about Berninger’s lyricism within The National. The days of his hyper-literate, shadowy, ambiguous, and fragmented songwriting are mostly over—and no, not every song is inherently a depiction of the minutiae of his daily life, but it is those songs, and those specific, vivid portraits, that often resonate the most for me personally, as a listener who has grown as the band has.
And it is one of my favorite National songs, simply because of how deeply it affected me the first time I heard it, and how it still, five years later, affects me each time I listen.
Somewhere, after the second verse in the smoldering, almost whisper quiet “Nobody Else Will Be There,” the opening track from Sleep Well Beast, a frustrated, and impatient Berninger poses a question—“Why are we still out here holding our coats? We look like children,” he asks, before following it with one more. “Goodbyes always take us half an hour—can’t we just go home?”
The first time I recognized Matt Berninger’s technique of repurposing specific song lyrics would have been roughly 15 years ago.
And this is not a thing that he does much of anymore, if at all, but there was certainly a time within the early days of the band where certain phrases, or lines, would be used in one song, and then, perhaps, would turn up elsewhere, later on, creating a bit of a callback, or a self-referential nod to the listener.
The creation of a throughline that connected the band’s material.
And this is not a true repurposing—but more akin to a callback, or a self-referential nod, and there are entirely too many similarities within the specificity of the words, and images, for this to be just coincidental.
In the lines that lead up to the chorus in “Weird Goodbyes,” Berninger, finding himself once again making observations from among the lowest places of his already lower register, sings, “Your coat’s in my car, I guess you forgot—it’s crazy the things we let go of.”
Then, within the chorus itself, “The grief it gets me—the weird goodbyes.”
Goodbyes always take us half an hour—can’t we just go home?
At one point, this was going to be about a lot of things.
I am uncertain how many of those things it will be about in the end.
I find I am thinking about the idea of how we choose to say goodbye to one another—and what may, and what may not, make those goodbyes “weird.”
*
If you are like me, then perhaps you have found yourself in a situation where you would like to, or in some cases, in fact, need to, make an exit. And it is not at the risk of worrying you have overstayed your welcome, but rather, if you are like me, then you are self-aware enough to know when it is simply time—it is simply time to go.
If it is a situation where there is a sense of obligation, like a spouse’s work function, maybe you have set a time limit on how long you believed yourself to be able to attend—45 minutes? An hour at the most? The impatience you try not to wear across your face as you casually check your watch to see how much time you have put in, or how much time you have left. The rounds you make with your spouse’s co-workers, or boss, or others gathered at the event, and the small talk you find it within, somehow, to engage in, as difficult as it might be.
The hour is up. You understand this is all you are capable of doing. Perhaps you make one final round to extend a genuine though brief thank you for the invitation, but perhaps you are simply unable to.
And then you exit.
If you are like me, then perhaps you have found yourself in a situation where you would like to, or in some cases, in fact, need to, make an exit.
If you are like me, then you are self-are enough to know when it is simply time—it is simply time to go.
Maybe there is no sense of obligation at all—maybe there is no time limit on how long you thought you might be able to last, but rather, there is the inevitability of a feeling you are unable to shake.
A terrible, visceral, debilitating sadness.
The depression that eventually plays its hand.
You become quiet. Withdrawn. You wish you had a better understanding of why this so often happens.
Others, and they are partially correct in their assessment of you, presume you are having a miserable time. That is, of course, not the kind of time you wanted to have.
It is the time you are having, regardless.
You recognize the feeling. It is the embrace of an old friend. And you recognize that when it comes, because it almost always does, that means it is simply time to go. For your sake. And the sake of those around you. Because you will withdraw further into yourself unless you are able to take the exit that presents itself.
And when I think about how we say goodbye to one another, and the idea of the long, drawn-out goodbye—and how it can regionally be described as the “Minnesota Goodbye,” I think about the way my wife often struggles to end conversations, specifically with her siblings, as we are all trying to part ways.
Often ready to go, I coat on, uncomfortable, perhaps growing impatient, or visibly frustrated, as she and her sister and brother-in-law slowly, sometimes awkwardly linger, and do their best to avoid what I could identify as the obvious conclusion to their discussion.
The goodbye drawn out just a little bit longer. The conversation carried just slightly further than it, perhaps, needs to be.
Why are we still out here holding our coats—we look like children.
Goodbyes always take us half an hour—can’t we just go home?
And what I am wondering, though, is that within that desire to try and extend, and avoid the actual parting, do we often linger, or carry conversations further than they, perhaps, need to be, simply out of love? The love of the other person? A familial love. A platonic love.
Do we want to steal just one more moment, however fleeting, or forced, it might seem, because we care too much.
At one point, this was going to be about a lot of things.
I am uncertain how many of those things it will be about in the end.
I find I am thinking about the idea of how we choose to say goodbye to one another—and what may, and what may not, make those goodbyes “weird.”
What might make them weird for the other person, and what might make them weird to us.
*
In writing about music, especially in the last few years, I often return to the ideas of tension, and release, and trying to find a balance between the two.
This is a concept that I, over time, came to understand based on listening to The National, and have tried—and perhaps even been occasionally successful at—to use it, or apply it, when I write about other artists. I don’t remember where I read it—it would have been an interview with someone in the band several years ago, but what I often think of is how the group refers to the shifts in dynamism over the course of three albums: Alligator, dark and claustrophobic, is all release and little tension; Boxer is almost entirely tension with little release; and High Violet is a kind of precarious balance between the two.
And there are sonic hallmarks one might anticipate hearing in a new song by The National in 2022, and yes, many of the familiar elements you might expect are present and accounted for in “Weird Goodbyes,” but the thing about it is the band is still able to create something that, even in any familiarity you may hear, is still wildly compelling and thoughtful in how it sounds, and how it lingers long after you’ve finished listening.
Musically, and lyrically too, “Weird Goodbyes” operates from a place of simmering tension—it’s beautiful and melancholic, yes, but it is also a song that burns slowly and doesn’t reveal itself completely until just the right moment—not when it has to, but rather when it wants to, and in that slow burn, and in those very deliberate reveals, you can feel, and hear, the grip the band has on the song itself—the restraint that, only for a few moments, they are willing to release slightly.
“Weird Goodbyes” is propelled forward from the moment it begins with one of the most effective drum machine patterns the band has used since incorporating more synthetic textures within its soundscape. It slithers along unassumingly throughout the entirety of the song, punctuated eventually with the inclusion of subtle percussive elements like a shaker and the snap of what at least sounds like a real snare drum—everything working to keep the unrelenting nature of the rhythm moving forward, while sonically and efficaciously blurring the spaces in between the glitchy, skittering drum programming and the exemplarily percussive work of the band’s drummer, Bryan Devendorf.
Musically, the element that is, perhaps, as important as the beat you hear pulsating through “Weird Goodbyes,” if not the most important and more or less the centerpiece to the song, is the mournful, pensive, and cavernous sound of Aaron Dessner’s piano—the chords, gentle and introspective, but there is a strength within just how somber they are, allowing themselves to weave in and out of the other layers of the song, like the drum programming, the eerie longing of the pedal steel guitar that cascades in as more instrumentation is slowly added into song, or the icy, creeping string accompaniment that swirls quietly around the outside early on before descending into, and through the fabric of the tune, emphasizing and heightening the sense of drama that the band has labored over in striking.
Throughout their canonical work, there are enormous moments of catharsis, but in “Weird Goodbyes,” the band never lets the song reach those towering heights. The song, at least in its build-up to the first appearance of the chorus, tightly simmers—it isn't a dark song, at least musically speaking, but there is a shadow that is cast over it that recedes slightly as a little bit of light peeks in as the build continues, moving from the verse into what is, commonly, referred to as the pre-chorus.
And you can hear it—it isn’t a huge moment for the song—there are no real “huge” moments in a song so restrained, but “Weird Goodbyes” begins opening up as much as it is able to as Berninger and Justin Vernon’s voices come together on the line, “Move forward now—there’s nothing to do.” From there, the song continues its slight build until the moment where it is given the opportunity to shimmer within the chorus.
*
It was not among the lyrics to “Weird Goodbyes” that grabbed my attention, or at least impacted me on some kind of personal, emotional level, during my initial listens, and even now, weeks after the single’s arrival and weeks after I have been listening to the song, at different times throughout the day, on repeat, like I am some kind of emotional terrorist—even now while I find myself thousands of words into a reflection on it, the band responsible for it, and an overextended narrative about myriad other things swirling around the song’s orbit, it is still not among the lyrics that truly affected me, but what I find is that I am thinking about the way, in between the first verse and the second, Matt Berninger mumbles the line, “I feel like throwin’ towels into water.”
The National has not, as of yet, officially annotated the lyrics to “Weird Goodbyes” on the song’s page on Genius—a brief quote from Berninger, regarding the song’s overall meaning, or theme, is included within the description, but the individual lyrics themselves are left up to listener (and Genius site user) interpretation.
Someone was quick to draw the comparison between the phrase “I feel like throwin’ towels into water” as a bit of a play on the idea of “throwing in the towel,” though I see Berninger’s lyric as something much more desperate than simply just giving up. There is something devastating—as there often is with National lyrics—about it, and the devastation, I think, comes from the quiet yet evocative way Berninger depicts a futile act.
I think about the urgency and panic I often feel when I grab a towel to sop up a spill of some kind, and I think about the kind of heartbroken disconnectedness Berninger is writing about—the towels, the water—all metaphors certainly, but the portrait he paints of a sadness and a disbelief in what is happening around him, or a least around the song’s protagonist, is one of the things that really lingers well after the song has moved along to other imagery.
Berninger, as a writer, became much more direct in his lyricism sometime between Boxer and High Violet. He still uses a fair amount of fragmented imagery that is open to further analysis, but it is far less dark and claustrophobic than it once was in the band’s very early days. “Weird Goodbyes,” lyrically, like its arranging, is not inherently dark—but even as shimmery as the music itself becomes once the song peaks in its chorus, the song as a whole is a stark, extremely personal reflection which is what makes it so compelling and ultimately so human.
In his brief description of the song’s subject matter, Berninger refers to “Weird Goodbyes” as being about “letting go of the past, moving on, then later being overwhelmed by second thoughts.”
And even before the song arrives at the point where it is more clearly about the overwhelming nature of second thoughts and the difficulties of moving on, “Weird Goodbyes” also toys with the concept of time and memory—both the notion of remembering along with wanting to be remembered—in a solemn tone within the first verse.
“There will come a time I’ll want to know I was here,” Berninger reflects in his soothing, lower baritone. “Names on the doorframes—inches, and ages. Handprints in concrete at the softest stages.”
Of course, the conceit of the song comes within both the “pre-chorus” and the chorus itself, which is where the song’s protagonist—perhaps Berninger himself or a fictionalized version, is grappling with both the urge to let go, but also the overwhelming torrent of regret that comes the instant it happens.
And there is a vivid immediacy to the way this unfolds within the song, a sadness within that culminates in the subtlety of comparing a left-behind jacket found in a car to the letting go of something, or someone—“Your coat’s in my car—I guess you forgot,” Berninger sings dejectedly. “It’s crazy the things we let go of.”
And there is a terrible, beautiful honesty in how Berninger writes about the instant it all catches up, and how he portrays a breakdown—“It finally hits me—a mile’s drive. The sky is leaking, the windshield’s crying”—the breakdown both literal and figurative, happening in a car, pulled over, on the side of the road, in a rainstorm.
“The grief it gets me—the weird goodbyes. My car is creepin’, I think it’s dyin.’ I’m pullin’ over until it heals. I’m on a shoulder of lemon fields.”
Musically, “Weird Goodbyes” ends in a kind of resolve that many latter-day songs by The National end in—another hallmark of the last decade or so of their career, specifically within the Dessner brother’s becoming much more confident and ambitious in their arranging within the songs. The unrelenting beat that slithers its way through the song continues all of the way up until almost the end, and there is structurally very little breathing room as Berninger, and Vernon continue singing the refrain up until nearly the very final moment—and I was about to refer to it as a swelling, of some kind, primarily from the song’s swirling string accompaniment, but the music itself does not exactly swell in the end—it just sustains itself on one final exhale before dissolving into the ether.
Lyrically, however, there is no easy resolution in the song as it leads up to the end.
Just a car, pulled over, on the side of the road, in a rainstorm.
The person behind the wheel struck with grief.
I think the thing that makes “Weird Goodbyes” so compelling, aside from subjectively being a new single from one of my absolute favorite bands of all time, is the way that even within the reserve and anxiety that it is operating from, it is a hauntingly beautiful portrait that is thoughtful enough to put these complicated and difficult feelings into words with poignancy, but it also manages to do so through a pop songwriting lens, casting itself in a memorable, albeit somber, dazzling melody.
*
I am thinking about the things we let go of.
At one point, this was going to be about a lot of things.
I am uncertain how many of those things it will be about, or if it will, in the end, even be about those things in the way I originally had wanted, but rather in how I can articulate them right now.
In writing, I fear I may fall victim to, at times, placing entirely too much pressure on myself. And I am certain that I may fall victim to doing this in other avenues of my life as well, but in writing, what I have come to find, especially this year, and perhaps some of last year as well, is that unless the words find their way out perfectly during a first draft, there will be quite a struggle in my efforts to overcome, or workaround.
Sometimes this all comes very easily—easier than originally anticipated—and that ease, often a surprise, is always welcomed in the end. Sometimes it is not as easy—not impossible by any means but challenging enough that it takes, perhaps, just a little more time, or requires slightly more thought or maneuvering on my part, to truly find my way into what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it.
Within my writing, I fear I fall victim to placing entirely too much pressure on myself to say so much or be so profound or thoughtful, and within that pressure, the piece itself begins to buckle under the weight of its own ambitions—my ambitions, and hopes, for it, before it has really even been given a chance.
I am thinking about the things we let go of.
I am thinking about the idea of how we choose to say goodbye to one another, and what may or may not make those goodbyes weird.
I am thinking about the idea of the long goodbye—drawn out just a little bit longer than it perhaps might need to be. The conversation carried just slightly further than it, perhaps, has to.
And what I am wondering, though, is that within that desire to try and extend, and avoid the actual parting, do we find ourselves wanting to linger, or carry conversations further than they, perhaps, need to be carried, simply out of love?
The love of the other person. Familial or platonic.
Do we, perhaps selfishly, want just one more moment, however fleeting or forced it might seem, because we do care that much.
I am thinking about how, the last time my wife and I took a vacation, in the book I was reading on the plane, I learned that, as a verb, the word “essay” means “an attempt, or an effort.”
To try.
And I am thinking about how often, in an essay, you start with a topic, or an idea—a thing you would like to write about. And perhaps you have a rough outline, or a conceptualization of how you would like it to end, or where it will end—a specific moment in the narrative. The difficult part is bridging the gap between those two points, and often, within an essay—an attempt, or an effort; you learn something about yourself—perhaps unexpected—along the way.
What I understand is that for all of my exits, and within all of the exits that I have felt the need to take—perhaps taking them with an urgency for one reason or another—and for all of the impatience and frustrations I am unable to hide while I stand holding my coat, looking like a child, wondering why goodbyes take a half an hour when I only want to go home—what I understand is for all of that, I stop short of saying I am “bad” at goodbyes with those I truly care about, but I am weird at them.
The grief, it gets me.
The times when I say, “I’ll walk out with you,” to a friend, as they are leaving, and I follow them from the front door of my home to their car, often parked mere feet away in the driveway. The goodbye, the parting—lingering and holding onto the moment just a little longer before they find their way into the driver’s seat, close the door, turn the ignition, and drive away.
The weird goodbyes.
I am thinking of the difficulties I have when parting, and saying goodbye, with someone I love—the admission that our time together, for that moment at least, has ended.
I am thinking about the goodbyes I make weird for myself—the anxieties and insecurities I end up projecting onto others as they leave. Does the goodbye seem abrupt? Do they seem like something—something that I have done, of course—is bothering them upon their exit? Or are they just simply trying to leave.
How many phone calls, or texts, a few hours later, have I made where I have prefaced the conversation with, “Hey, I have a bit of a strange question,” then asked if they were upset, or if something was wrong, as they were departing.
I have no real evidence. “It just seemed like something was bothering you,” I say in a low voice, perhaps a little embarrassed, understanding the feeling that I have in these moments is one I should not trust, or convince myself of its accuracy, but I believe it, regardless.
Nothing is ever bothering them. It was just time for them to go.
I am thinking about the things we let go of.
I think about my perception of a goodbye, and how others perceive my own.
I am thinking about the goodbyes that sustain us for longer periods of time—perhaps a year or two, perhaps over a decade. And how if, in those goodbyes—in those moments when we part, we maybe don’t know the extent of how much time will pass, but we understand that it will be awhile before we see one another in person again and that this goodbye, weird or not, is it.
A friend told me recently that she thought that it seemed when parting, I leave things unsaid—that she sensed hesitation on my part. “I’m waiting for you to say something,” she observed. “And you inhale, and then the moment passes.”
And I am, of course, thinking about the moments that have passed—that I have allowed to pass. And when there has been something left unsaid—something I ultimately hope is understood without having to be verbalized because I am simply too afraid to say it aloud.
I am thinking about the grief, when it comes, and the goodbyes that we selfishly try to extend, for just a few more moments, however fleeting or forced they might appear, because we care that much.
There was a point, early on, like two weeks ago, during the initial draft of this, which I ultimately wound up scrapping almost in its entirety, that my intent with this was it would be about a lot of things. But I am uncertain, in the end, how many of those things it wound up being about at all—either the way I had originally envisioned, or even in the way that I found, eventually, I was able to articulate myself within this moment.
In an essay, you start with a topic, or an idea—the thing you would like to write about. Maybe you have a rough outline, or some kind of conceptualization of how you would like the piece to end, or where it will end—a specific moment in the narrative.
Often, within an essay, you learn something about yourself—perhaps unexpected—along the way.
I am thinking about how surprising it is, in the end, the things we let go of, not because we want to, but because we have to.
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