Left Behind

Growing up a military brat, you are trained to leave. Trained to adapt, to set down surface roots that are easily transplanted. You blend in, make friends to sit at the lunch table with, but you keep your roots close to home. You don't dig too deep. Your settlement is always with the next launch in the back of your mind. Should you paint that wall? How easy will it be to paint over if you need to? Should you plant that tree? Will it grow enough for you to really enjoy it? These are all inherent in your decisions, and completely logical.

For me, leaving is easy. It isn't but with a lifetime of practice, it is like any other hard thing you've had to do a million times.

Getting left behind? That's another story completely.

The first time I felt like I feel right now was when my best friend, Tasha, moved away. Her Dad was military too, so we should have known better. We knew that the odds were against both of us to stay in the same place for a long time. But in one short year we found ourselves spending all the time we could together. She was one of my first authentic "best friends" - the kind that I allowed my roots to dig in a little deeper. She was a soul sister. Then came the day that we had ignored would come. She was moving.

When she moved I cried. I had lost a piece of what made the place home. She was no longer a part of my everyday life and I had nothing new to distract me from her absence. I remember asking my Dad, bewildered, why her move had been so hard for me when I had moved so many times myself. I had never experienced these emotions, because I had never really been left behind by someone I cared this much about.

He said "it's easier to leave than to be left behind." It is. For me anyway.

The next time I felt like that was actually twice by the same person: when my sister moved to college, and when she moved away from the college that we both attended. Her first move to college was hard on me because for an entire summer- we were each other's only friend. We moved before my senior year of High School and she was home for the summer after traveling for a year with Up With People. She always had a group of friends, so it was a rarity that she chose my companionship. In this situation we both had no other option. We dug in with each other and made our summer enjoyable. When she left, I cried when I saw her red hair in the hairbrush she left behind. I felt ridiculous about it. Three years later, my second year of college, her last- she left for an internship which would be the last thing she did before her graduation. I cried. We had been each other's back up plan for everything for two years. My back-up was leaving me.

I've learned. I don't put my roots down. I don't dig in. Often I'm the first to move.

Now another friend is leaving me before I have the chance to leave her first. She's moving clear across the country, and even though I'm an adult and we have more means of communication, it feels again like those times. I had set roots down. I dug in. When she left this morning, I cried.

I'm not terrible at goodbyes, I'm terrible at being left behind. When you take my roots with you. Am I supposed to regrow them?

I want my kids to experience what it's like to stay in one place and develop long-lasting friendships and relationships, but I am hurting with the pain of being left behind. I feel the urge to move. To leave. To be in charge of where the roots go. To settle lightly somewhere. To keep everyone at a safe arms-length.

My heart actually hurts, and it's like exercising a muscle that I didn't know existed. I'm not used to letting this place hurt. I want to skip over it. I also wish I knew how to be left behind. I wish it was one of the hard things that I've been doing so many times that it didn't hurt so much. I don't really know what to do with this unfamiliar feeling. It's so uncomfortable. It hurts and I hate it.

When my friend left this morning, I cried. But then I stopped myself. I gathered my remaining roots and whispered to them: "stay close."