Just Passing Through

I haven't really thought about it  deeply until now, but I meet lots of new people. Lots. I mean, in my general, every day boring life I don't really meet that many new people, however, having worked at camps for the past few summers, I have met people from different areas of the country and even from different parts of the world. Not only has working at camps brought me into contact with lots of new people, but having foreign exchange students live with me has also introduced me to lots of new people that I definitely wouldn't have met under normal circumstances.

Over the time that we spent together, I have become excellent friends with many of these people. Not just activity partners that I would hang out with sometimes when I was bored. True Friends. The ones who felt you. You know the ones I mean.

But then it ends. Camp is over and everyone leaves. The semester ends and they go back to their country.

They disappear.

Poof. Oblivion.

At first you communicate a lot, and of course there is talk of meeting up again, but as time passes, whether or not communication is upheld and visits occur, the distance and lack of personal interaction dulls the relationship. They slip away. Even as hard as I try, and as hard as I can tell that they are trying, to still be friends, it doesn't work.

It is depressing to invest so deeply into someone and then have them simply plucked away to go back to wherever they came from before. All of the time we spent. All of the things we talked about. All the memories we share.

Gone.

I am left with an emptiness that nobody else I know can understand. Maybe an orphanage mother, whose children come, grow and leave without so much as a "thank you", even after all that love was given, understands what I go through.

It's almost like death. It seems pointless to even try if eventually they will leave. Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? Or perhaps eventually I become hardened by my continuous loss and have nothing left to give.

Yea, good friends are hard to come by. Holding onto the ones I have seems to be hard enough let alone finding new ones that are suitable replacements. You can't really ever replace someone who was a part of you.

Saying goodbye sucks.

A lot.

No really. It does.