Flightster

Difficult Goodbyes

• by Srinivas Rao
• on May 17th, 2011
• 3 Comments

Friendships With Tourists

When you’re an expat or a long term traveler, the hardest thing you experience is saying goodbye to the people who come and go. As we drank our coffee and watched waves pour in, I felt a sense of emptiness knowing that a friend who I had been surfing with every single day for the last two weeks was returning home. He was the first close friend I’d had since I left home.  Knowing that people are going to come and go and my life will be a revolving door of friendships for an extended period of time is discomforting. I can’t help but wonder when the next close friend will arrive and how long they’ll stay. I can’t help but wonder how I’ll feel when they leave again.  It’s one of many difficult goodbyes that come with being a traveler.

I was talking to one of the locals who seems to befriend every tourist who comes through, especially those who return year after year and he said he tends to avoid the goodbye because it is really hard to see people go when they’ve become such good friends. Our very own Colin Wright has even said the lifestyle of a serial traveler can make relationships a challenge. There’s no doubt in my mind that it would be heartbreaking and exhilarating to have a two week love affair with a lost soul in paradise.  For some long term travelers it’s too painful to see their friends come and go, so they avoid intimacy altogether.

Friends from Studying Abroad

When I lived abroad for 6 months I’d had countless experiences with friends from all over the world.  Then suddenly the moment we’d all been dreading since the day we met had arrived. We stood on the beach hugging, saying goodbye and wondering how 6 months had gone by in what seemed like a blink. Knowing that the people who had become your closest friends would be thousands of miles away was just the beginning of the reverse culture shock experience. Just the thought that it could be years before we met again, or the thought we may never cross paths again  was enough to put us into a funk that the hostel dwellers could never really understand.  It’s like a part of who you are is missing and the life that lies ahead of you when you return home is empty.

Family That Lives Abroad or Far Away

I know for my mother  this has to be one of the toughest things. She only sees her own mother every couple of years because she lives in India which is a 24 hour flight . When you see such close family so infrequently, the time that you have with them is so much more precious. You soak up every moment because the end of your vacation will be here before you know it. A few years back my younger sister moved away to Omaha Nebraska to go to medical school. It never occurred to me at the time that I’d only see her about once a year for the next several years. Every holidays season we share a difficult goodbye.

Perhaps it’s the constant stimulus of travel.  Maybe it’s the unfamiliar environment.  It might even be the adventure that comes with the territory. Whatever it is, travel seems to be a tie that binds, often leaving so many of us with difficult goodbyes.

Srinivas Rao

Srinivas is an avid surfer and personal development blogger at The Skool of Life. He's also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers.