As of late, I have been thinking "Why did Joan Didion write "Goodbye to all of that"...?". I feel as if this is an archaic idea of mine; she wrote it in 1967, and everyone knows that the gist of the essay/short story/whatever you want to call it is that yes, you can stay too long at the fair. I get that part. Dare I say, WE get that part. So, that's not the part that I've been pondering for what seems like months now. I'm honestly still trying to construe a sentence, a statement, a stream of thoughts that can really describe what I have been thinking, but all I can come up with is "is there really anything to say goodbye to?". It's not elegant. Not at all. But, it's the best that I can do.
A TLDR of her essay is that after 8 years in New York, the city lost it's shine. Her husband had already moved to LA and she'd been to one too many parties. Ok. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she would be able to afford to keep a home in Manhattan while living in California full time. In the literal sense, there was really nothing she was saying "goodbye" to. Instead, it was really a "see ya later". That's too easy of a deduction, and too literal for my tasting for it to be the answer to my question.
When you leave a place, you never really are gone. The ghosts of your tempered past lie wherever they may. It could be the bridge you walked across to get to work, the coffee shop you frequented on your lunch break, the park you sat in every spring time, you name it. When I think of the few places I've lived after leaving Chesterfield, it's always "I'll be back when I can make it, when I have the time...", but never a cold turkey "goodbye to all of that". There are pieces of you that you leave in those places. My interest in Latin American history piqued in La Republica and Las Condes. My love for skateboarding is rooted in skating around the Chesterfield Towne Center with the Class Fam (if you know, you know). My keen desire to live in a bustling, thriving city where everything is connected one way or another was born in Brooklyn. The trips I took as a kid to see my extended family in Maryland made it so I loved public transit. I can still remember sitting on those dingy plastic-cloth mesh seats that WMATA continues to use to this day.
You can't say "goodbye" to a place that still lives inside you, at least I think. If you think about it, there's a little piece of every place you've ever been wherever you go.
So this brings me back to my original question: is there really anything to say goodbye to? There has to be, since most things have a beginning and an end. But when it comes to lived experiences, those moments that are plastered in your mental? Those are forever.
