Even as a boy, I always hated goodbyes.
How can we love the people in our lives so deeply, and then one day, simply never see them again?
Perhaps these moments we share are anything but fleeting, but maybe… maybe they never really vanish.
Maybe the scientists are right and time is not what we think. Maybe memory is as real as the present.
And no one we have ever loved is truly gone.
But knowing that intellectually doesn’t stop the ache in the chest when the door actually closes.
For a long time, that ache dictated how I operated socially. I was the guy standing in the foyer with my coat on but my keys still in my pocket, asking one last question, telling one last joke. I was terrified that if I walked out the door at 11:00 PM, the real magic would happen at 11:15 PM.
I used to hold on until the bitter end, afraid to miss that perfect, cinematic moment that might still happen. I thought that if I just stayed long enough, the night would deliver some final epiphany or a burst of laughter that would define the friendship forever.
But a few years ago, the script flipped.
I realized that waiting for magic doesn’t make the magic happen. In fact, chasing it usually chases it away. There is a law of diminishing returns to a dinner party or a night out. The conversation eventually circles the drain. The energy shifts from “connection” to “endurance.” You end up watching your friends stifle yawns, or you find yourself checking your phone, and suddenly that beautiful evening has a slightly ragged, tired edge to it.
So, I stopped being the last to leave. I leaned into the exit.
Now, I look for the high note.
It’s that moment when the laughter is loudest, the stories are flowing, and the connection feels electric. That is the peak. And counter-intuitively, that is when I grab my coat.
It feels risky, leaving when things are good. It feels like walking out of a movie halfway through. But there is a distinct power in it. By leaving while it’s still a high point, you preserve the memory in amber. You walk out into the cool night air with the sound of laughter still ringing in your ears, rather than the sound of dishes being stacked or the awkward silence of a party that went on twenty minutes too long.
It leaves you—and the people you’re with—wanting more.
I think this applies to the romantic side of things, too. In that early “limbo” phase of a relationship, before you live together, the instinct is to cling. To stretch the Sunday night hang-out until 2:00 AM on Monday morning because you can’t bear to separate. But all that does is leave you exhausted and resentful of the alarm clock the next day. There is something surprisingly romantic about the discipline of parting ways. It says, “I love this enough to protect it from becoming mundane.”
But then, inevitably, my mind circles back to the goodbyes we don’t get to curate. The permanent ones.
The friends who pack up a U-Haul and move across the ocean. The relationships that fracture beyond repair. And the people who leave this plane of existence entirely. Those exits are rarely timed for the “high note.” They are messy, often abrupt, and they leave a void that no amount of reframing can fill.
When a friend dies, or even just moves so far away that the friendship becomes a ghost of what it was, the “boy who hates goodbyes” wakes up inside me again. I still struggle with the unfairness of it. I still look for the physics loophole that says they aren’t really gone.
And yet, this new philosophy of the “early exit” has made me think about my own eventual departure.
I am a person consumed by curiosity. I want to know what happens next. I want to see what technology looks like in fifty years; I want to know if we solve the mysteries of the cosmos; I want to see how the story of humanity plays out. The idea of the screen cutting to black while the movie is still interesting terrifies me.
But if I’m honest, maybe the logic holds up there, too.
There is a dignity in leaving the party while you are still dancing. There is a grace in exiting while you are still curious, still loving, and still engaged with the world, rather than waiting until the lights come on and the music stops.
I still hate saying goodbye. I probably always will. But I’m learning to appreciate the beauty of a well-timed exit—even if it leaves me wondering what happens next.
