Goodbyes Aren't Always Good

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to Fortune Cookie, a podcast hosted by me, Wendy.

Welcome to what I consider the last stretch of the year. In my own work rhythm there’s always a part of me that wants to take a break around September or October but something about it being the last third of the year makes me want to just cross the imaginary 2020 finish line and rest in January instead. I also tend to treat September as a mini new years, with its own self-assessment and adjustments. A few months ago Dan got a second-hand stationary bike and being someone who was never crazy for spin class I kept ignoring it. Until this month. Weirdly, I was trying to come up with reasons why companies such as Soul Cycle or other big spin workout programs have been successful and one hypothesis was that it’s nice how little mental energy is needed to just get on the bike, compared to some other popular programs like Crossfit or Orange Theory. I basically deduced my own way to trying out our stationary bike and now it’s where I take a break, watch some Youtube, and recharge my mind. Our minds, what a funny thing.

I really enjoyed interviewing my mom last month and asking her those questions we’ve never discussed before. I’m trying to see if my dad will agree to an interview but he’s not in the mood for sharing it seems. I’ll keep trying! A few of you really embraced what I shared about embracing your culture while being able to recognize it’s historical or political shortcomings. I got the coolest letter about one of you embracing their ranching heritage which was so enjoyable to read. Here’s today’s letters by the window:

Riding has been an integral part of my identity for as long as I can remember. It's more than just an activity, or a hobby; it's the way I connect with my family, and celebrate our ranching traditions. When I was a kid I really didn't want to be labeled as "the horse girl", particularly when I was in middle school and was over concerned about fitting in. Most of my classmates had no idea that I rode, let alone that it was how I spent the majority of my free time. Around my friends, I used to pretend to be embarrassed by the cowboy hat, and chaps, and spurs, when in reality these things hold a lot of pride and importance in connecting me to my ranching heritage. I've always been proud of my family's ranching history, as I've gotten older, though, I've been much more willing to share about it. I might be a horse girl, but if you give me the chance to explain what I do and why I do it, you'll see I'm a lot more than that. 

This idea of being embarrassed by something that now gives you pride reminds me of a funny story that happened when I was in Kindergarten. Once in a while we’d have a special food day, and pizza day was coming up so I recall bringing a slip of paper home with instructions for my parents. I think the instructions were for me to go to school with some pizza toppings to help make pizza day a fun day, but my mom either misunderstood the instructions or didn’t know what pizza was, and I went to school with a small container of firm seasoned tofu and bean sprouts. Firm seasoned tofu, by the way, so good. It looks like gouda cheese in firmness and brown colour but is a square-shaped puck about an inch thick. Goes so well in stir fry as a sliced ingredient, or honestly, I just slice it and dip it in soy sauce to eat it as is. Amazing. Bean sprouts are ok… I wavered in and out of liking them throughout childhood but my mom insisted it was healthy for me. Anyways, as you know, neither of these things are classic pizza toppings. By the time I saw kids unpacking their cheese, sliced green peppes, cute little pepperonis, I knew I had made a mistake. I think the teacher asked someone else to share with me and I ended up bringing my chopped ingredients back home the same day. It was embarrassing, but now I love this story because I do love the food I accidentally brought. My mom was just way ahead of the curve on fusion food.

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Today’s fortune cookie is: Goodbyes aren’t always good

Some of you may know that for the last few years I’ve had a part time job at my church. It’s been a really enjoyable job, I get to meet a lot of people, I really like the staff team I work with, and I get to host fun events and put my love for efficiency to use in how we do things. September actually marks the end of my time working for the church, I’ve been thinking about this for over a year and have finally decided it’s time to let someone else pickup the role and I’ll focus more on Withwendy. Today in fact I participated in my last zoom staff meeting, which was a sad way to say goodbye to a team I like so much. The fact that we don’t gather on Sundays for church service further intensifies the finality of it all since I can’t just look forward to seeing them again soon. 

I think this pandemic period has resulted in many people saying goodbye in ways they didn’t anticipate. Sometimes I think about things we were doing in March just before the shutdown. Joking with friends that we should all move in together if coronavirus gets serious, and now realizing that was one of the last times I was with friends before months of confinement. I think about when my parents dropped us off at the airport after the holidays and I cried when we hugged goodbye. To be fair I always end up crying at the Calgary airport, but I would have cried harder if I had known what 2020 was going to be like. Heck I might have just stayed right there in Calgary. Last year at this time Dan and I were on a two-week trip through the UK and we had such a nice time. I put together a vlog for us to watch and the whole time we just gawked at how freely we were living our life. No masks or hand sanitizers in sight. Credit to the Scottish Highlands though, we did also gawk at that, a thing of beauty. That was the last vacation Dan and I took together, and we just didn’t know it. None of us had a clue we were just saying goodbye slowly until the day the pandemic shut it all down.

Because of how non-consentual this goodbye to the old life has felt, I tried thinking about a very welcome goodbye in my life. There’s one goodbye that comes to mind, and it’s when I decided to breakup with my boyfriend on the last day of high school, after the last class of the day. We had been going through some bad cycles, our weeks would always start ok, but by Friday something would blow up and we wouldnt speak to each other all weekend. Eventually I just started to convince myself, probably out of self defense, that he was probably going to break up with me on Monday. I’d picture it happening, got all my tears out ahead of time so I wouldnt be shocked and cry at school, and then reassure myself that I’ll be fine without him. Monday would come and in fact he was not interested in breaking up, but we kept going through our weekly cycles to the point where I had reassured myself so many times that I’d be fine without him that I realized… I’d be fine without him. And that I dont have to so miserable every weekend. What a thought. And so, when our biggest blowup happened right before the end of high school, I decided it’s time for this to end. I wrote him a letter to try and explain myself and got it to him at the beginning of the last day. Then I waited in dread all day to confirm to his face that I don’t want us to continue. Honestly I was not a very brave communicator back then because he thought my letter was an apology, so he got hopeful things were going to be ok between us. As you can imagine, this was shaping up to be a great after-school confrontation.

I was in the band room hanging out after class, a few of us had gathered there because our band teacher was cool and that made it a nice place to be. My boyfriend’s face appeared through the glass window on the doors and I realized, it was time to talk. I went out into the hallway, he gave me a hug and looked hopeful, which was concerning, and so before I fell back into what I believed would inevitably be more bad cycles, I told him I didn’t want to be together anymore. This did not go well. To make matters worse, the band room was closing up so I had to get all my things. The last day of high school usually includes cleaning your locker, taking home some forgotten science project, rediscovering a few textbooks, but mine had also included snack potlucks and finally bringing home the guitar I had stashed in the band room. So there I was, dragging a full backpack, a large garbage bag of locker items, a large tupperware still sticky from sliced fruit, and a guitar case down the hall and oh, right, my boyfriend, who despite my textbooks and hard guitar case’ best attempts was still the one weighing the heaviest on me. We moved to a quieter stairwell in my school and tried to carry on our conversation. Me crying, him yelling, occasionally we sat in silence as someone walked past us down the stairs. Someone even knew who I was and said “have a great summer Wendy!” to which I feebly replied “thanks you too” while trying to avoid eye contact. 

In retrospect, things actually got really bad in this conversation. It’s unfortunate that the best thing I can say about it is that “nobody got physically hurt”. If you’re ever in a situation where you’re afraid someone is going to get physically hurt during a conversation you should try to relocate to a safe place. Eventually we were reduced to him telling me to just leave him, just walk away, and I didn’t know what more I could do to try and achieve a peaceful split so I picked up my things. My backpack, my garbage bag, my tupperware, my guitar case, honestly… high school… so awkward. I went up the stairs, down the long hallway that stretched through the entire length of my school, emerged from the opposite side, crossed the street, and entered the dance studio where I was supposed to be in a hiphop class. Thanks to the fact that I didn’t wear makeup back then I only had to dance with puffy eyes and not a mascara mess.

This was a painful goodbye, in fact, to bring it back to consent the evidence in this story points to it being a very non-consentual goodbye on my boyfriend’s part. But by the time we decided to not contact each other anymore, by the time I gathered up all the cards, letters, and gifts, by the time I decided I didn’t want my parents to see all the stuff, by the time I walked them to the nearest grocery store, by the time I hurled them into the communal garbage dumpster, it was a welcome goodbye. It was far from perfect but there was some relief in getting to say goodbye on my own terms. 

I wonder what’s going through your minds, what things you’ve said goodbye to, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or surprisingly. I think of how I said goodbye so casually to my dad when he dropped me off for university, I think of when I looked out the taxi’s rear window as we drove away from my grandma for the last time, I think of my best friend and me crying in the hallway after I helped her move out because I was getting married. Sometimes we get to be the ones that decide when to say goodbye, sometimes we’re surprised to find out this is goodbye, sometimes we don’t realize we’ve been saying goodbye this whole time. I’d like to get better at goodbyes because they seem inevitable, therefore I would like them to suck less.

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All our previous episodes are on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and my website withwendy.com. Fortune Cookie With Wendy is edited and produced by me, with assistance from Michelle Choi who also designed our tasty cookie cover art. Thanks so much for being here and opening up with us, talk to you in the next episode, bye-bye!