This is the end...beautiful friend

This morning I got to the metro about ten minutes earlier than I usually do mostly because I have stopped doing my hair in the morning and thus I was ready to go at 8:30 instead of 8:40.  It's a good thing I got there early, too, because I had to wait for five trains to pass me before there was one "empty" enough for me to board.  I always wish there was a take-a-number system in the metro because frequently people who have only been waiting for like five minutes shove past me to get on and the result is that I am overcome with rage.  Today, as I finally wedged myself onto the metro almost leaving my backpack behind in the wake and shaking with anger I thought to myself "I can't wait to get out of this country."

The sentiment followed me all the way to school, a commute which took roughly an hour and a half, which is even longer than usual and by the time I got to my first class I was already ready to turn around and go home.  And then one of my students asked me something.

"Profe, are you going to be teaching classes here next year too?"
"No, I can't.  My contract has an end-date."
"And are you going to stay in Chile?"
"No, I'm leaving.  I'm going back to California."
"You're going back?  But then we'll never see you again."

And at that moment it hit me.

I'm doing this all over again.

I'm leaving a place and people that I love and putting a gigantic distant between myself and them.

You would think that saying goodbye gets easier after a while.  After all, in the last six years or so I've moved something like eight or ten times, always leaving people behind, always putting distance between myself and people I love.  I have to admit that the invention of things like Facebook and Skype definitely soften the blow, but the truth of the matter is that nothing compares to being able to hug and sit with someone you love and share a glass of wine and talk about everything that happened to you that day.  Seeing their face staring out at you from a computer screen just isn't the same.  Just ask anyone who's ever been in a long distance relationship (me.)

The fact is I constantly find myself in multiple long distance relationships with my friends and family and although they are not necessarily romantic they do take effort and work.  I make a point to try to be in contact with my best friends and my parents at least once a week and when I go a long time without speaking to them I can feel it and it feels unpleasant and distant.  Even when I'm at home it's the same problem because so few of my friends have chosen to stay in our hometown.  I have and have had friends in Hawaii, Canada, London, Korea, Italy, Kentucky, New York and a slew of other places that are more than just a quick drive away.  In a way I'm lucky to have such adventurous and cultured friends and it makes sense that we would all be attracted to each other because we clearly value the same things and have the same interests.  On the other hand, it makes sustaining relationships with them tricky and their always has to be effort on both sides.

This is what I'm getting myself into all over again when I leave in two months.  I always knew this day was coming.  It was never likely that we were all going to call Santiago home for the rest of our lives and unlike my study abroad program last year that had mostly California residents, these people I've come to know and love come from all over the country so that even once we're all back in the states we'll still have hundreds of miles separating us.  And that's not to even mention my Chilean friends some of whom I very well may never see again as long as I live.

Santiago is not a hub like London or even Buenos Aires and round trip tickets from California are in the range of about $1,500.  Always.  This is not chump change and it's not something that most people can just come up with.  And that's just airfare.  There's also money to be spent upon arrival.  In short, it's not a trip you can feasibly take once every few months.  It's not even a trip you can take once a year.  It's a trip that I logistically won't be able to afford for probably three or four years.  There are people in this country with whom I have formed real and lasting relationships and it is genuinely painful to have to leave them behind knowing that if we meet again it may not be for several years.

This is the life of a wanderer, a word that I often attribute to myself.  I like change and I am easily bored by staying in one place.  But there are consequences to this lifestyle.  While the people I have met here have made a lasting impression on me and I will never forget any of them, knowing that in two months I won't be able to walk six blocks and buzz their apartment with a bottle of wine and a bar of chocolate breaks my heart.  And while I'm returning home to cherished friends and loved ones, people I left behind when I decided to come here, those reunions are always bittersweet because I've scattered myself between many people and barring some bizarre circumstance in which every person I care about decided to move to the same city, I will never be completely whole because I will never have my whole heart within reach.

Just a handful of the goodbyes I'm dreading

Last year when I left I left desperately in love with someone I'd met here and it was one of the most trying moments of my life.  I've been thinking how much easier it will be to leave this time now that I'm not leaving in a brand new relationship but the closer the date looms the more I realize that that's just not true.  Sure, I great deal of my tears my last week in Santiago were for him but they were also for all of the incredible friendships I'd forged in the meantime.  I don't anticipate this departure being any easier, even though I have come to desperately miss the US, part of my heart will forever be in Santiago it's hard to know that the two parts will never and can never be totally united.