I'm being abandoned!

I’m the worst person ever at saying good-bye to people. I never know what to say, don’t know if I should give them a hug, don’t know if I should promise I’ll go visit, etc.

After living in Washington, D.C. and Paris a few years ago, I realized I hadn’t lived in the same place for more than five months at a time in more than two years. I was used to saying good-bye to people and missing my friends to go on all sorts of exotic adventures.

Well, the tables have turned. Here I am in Minneapolis, with my steady job, living only two hours from the town I grew up in. I’ve lived here for an astonishing 15 ½ months in a row, and I have recently watched a large number of friends move away for exciting adventures.

Take my friend Molly, for example. Molly and I worked together at the Daily. She studied abroad in London when I was in Paris, so we visited each other. Molly worked downtown this summer for Minneapolis-St. Paul magazine, so we’d hang out. But she recently picked up and moved to New York City. How exciting is that? She’s been through three job interviews to work for Random House editing Fodor’s Travel Guides.

Then there’s Tom, who is living in St. Petersburg, Fla., for three months. He goes to the beach to hang out three or four times a week. Also, he works in a bureau of the newspaper in Clearwater, Fla., which just happens to be the world Mecca of Scientology. Apparently there are tens of thousands of scientologists who walk around town and hang out in their matching outfits.

Then there are two of Tom’s friends: Charlie just moved to Boston to go to graduate school in plant biology (or something like that) at Harvard. His friend Devon and girlfriend Carmen also just picked up and moved to Seattle.

Although Winona isn’t necessarily as exotic as Florida or Seattle, Sammie recently moved to Winona for a new job. Also, my friend Paul who I haven’t spoken to in forever works for the newspaper in Tacoma, Wash. And Bridget lives in California. My friend Rocky recently moved back to Minneapolis after living in Salt Lake City for a while, but we haven’t really hung out that much and I think he’s leaving again soon.

Talking about my friends in France makes miserable, and even more stressed out. I miss them, and France, so much it makes me sick, even though they haven’t really moved anywhere. I’m the one who moved away that time.

The night before Tom, Charlie and Devon all left, we went to Keegan’s Pub in northeast Minneapolis. Everybody was drinking and talking about all their exotic plans for the future and I felt really weird.

Maybe it’s nice that for once, I don’t feel like I’m the one abandoning everyone. I’m not sitting alone in an apartment far away, wishing I wasn’t missing everyone and wanting to see my friends. Besides, I’ve still got a lot of good friends that are here and a support system and knowledge of the city that I haven’t felt I had in a while.

But missing goes both ways. Mary Stepnick put it perfectly the other day when she said that she felt like she had always been the one staying in Minneapolis and watching everybody else leave. After thinking about it, I’m not sure if I like abandoning home or being abandoned better.

I guess the crappy part about having the good fortune to be able to travel the world is that when you make friends all over, no matter what you do, you’re always missing somebody. You can never get them all in the same place.