We Don’t Say Goodbye Anymore, We Just Disappear

We don’t say goodbye anymore.

We just stop responding to their messages or answering their calls.

We pretend like we don’t really know them when we see them, we act like strangers, we act like we didn’t hurt them and we underestimate their pain. We’re too self-absorbed to consider their feelings so we don’t even say a kind word, we don’t even give a warm hug and we don’t even ask to make sure they’re okay.

We become distant, almost invisible, so they don’t even try to reach us, so they don’t try to ask for closure or ask for anything. We see them and walk the other way so we don’t even catch their eyes and see the way they look at us. We don’t want to remember that we’re the reason behind their sadness.

We say goodbye shortly after we say hello. We say goodbye before we get to know them. We say goodbye before we understand them and we say goodbye without even hearing what they have to say or how they feel.

We make this decision selfishly because that’s all we know. We say goodbye because we found something better, something more exciting, something that we want more so we just drop people like tennis balls, replacing them easily as long as we keep playing.

We say goodbye and we don’t expect anyone to get hurt because we didn’t promise anything, we don’t owe them anything, we purposely kept things casual and fun so no one takes anything seriously, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that we didn’t see it coming, that we didn’t make them fall for us and then decided not to catch them.

We don’t say goodbye anymore. We don’t explain. We don’t try to make sure the other person is okay. We just take off. We date the next person, we book the plane ticket, we leave the country and we make decisions without recognizing that someone was waiting for us, someone wanted to be part of our lives, someone wanted to plan their future around us.

So we leave and we don’t even look back and we don’t even try to come back. We leave because leaving is cooler, leaving is stronger, leaving makes you the one in control, so we keep leaving instead of staying and wonder why we end up alone or in unfulfilling relationships.

We don’t say goodbye anymore, we say leave me alone. I don’t want you. You’re not worth my time. I’m not sorry for breaking your heart because it was never even mine. 

by: Rania Naim