It was 5:30, give or take. Sleep was becoming a hard thing to come by, again.

She finally gave up on sleeping and pulled her laptop up on the bed with her, turned on iTunes. The music of SafetySuit had been in her head the last while anyway, hard beats and wistful lyrics, why not turn it on for real?

"I'm so confused, I must be losing it - this can't be right..."

Definitely a confused while, she'd be the first to admit it. She'd said way too many goodbyes over her life. Coming up on her twelfth move, not counting all the cross-city moves and summer trips. Goodbyes were always hard but worse was the knowing when to hold and when to let go.

'Was it something that we can't work through?"

A physical move away interrupted friendships- it didn't have to end them. Sometimes it was just time to give hugs and move on, sure, but other times you could hold that relationship and even build it deeper over the distance. She'd been lucky to have friends like that. Others, she'd had to learn to let go, wish them well and not grasp for more.

"Is it all my fault, and can I fix it please?"

She wished she knew how to fix all this. Human life, fallen world - it would never really be fixed till Heaven, she knew. "If this be the last time that we speak for a while" - between the TCK world of comings and goings, and a future together forever, goodbyes didn't have to be final. But the in between times when you weren't sure if you had ruined things, if it was your fault? What were you supposed to do about that?

She'd messed up big time in the last three years. She'd hurt friends she'd never meant to, been hurt deeper than ever. Lost a few friends not just to time and space but to conflict, misunderstandings, situations. Curled up in a pre-dawn clarity, she knew that she'd been naive to think, even as a college kid, that goodbyes were hard but simple. The last few years had shown her you didn't even have to move, to have someone leave you. Or to be told you'd left them, when you didn't know it.

The one friend - she gave a small smile, just thinking. Arguments, silence, tantrums, rending confusion, and that was only on her side! That friendship had been intensely good thing at its peak, and intensely hard at its lows. She'd even walked out, escaped out of reach, made a statement by refusing to be there. And that shook them both a little. They'd both reached back, a little, she'd gone back, and they'd kept little bits more over time. She shook her head at all the frustration, prayer, and excitement there had been, how she'd told herself over and over not to take things to heart so much. She'd played a lot of Daughtry during the old days. But all the emotions had been evened out by faithfulness, had mellowed into peace. She'd even gotten a facebook message yesterday, suggesting coffee some time. Proof of how God worked in His time and sometimes even pushed humans into working through things.

"Tell you that I know you'll smile again."
She gave a tired yawn. To get tea or try to sleep again? Maybe now her mind wouldn't race so much. Storying things out always helped, and generally with less disastrous results than writing emotion-filled emails or chats. One dark winter day, she'd poured out way too much, too fast, and felt horrible later. Actually, she'd done that more than once, but that one was sharp enough, drying enough, that she would avoid doing that again. Bad idea. "You lose perspective when you're all fire and emotion," pointed out one of her books.

She found it so hard to know when to be emotional and when to be rational. When did you tell someone, "I miss you too much to let you go," and when did you say, "I'll always care, but it'll be better if I try to move on" ? Or, colder but sometimes needed, "If you want to walk away, do that. Because waiting for you hurts too much."

Safetysuit had been one of the enduring favourites to come out of the last year, along with the series Alice and Primeval. "What If" had been used for a brilliant Youtube mv of Alice... "What if it makes you lose faith in me? What if it makes you question every moment you cannot see?" Goodbyes, with full warmth and confidence that they and you were okay, those were good things in a hard place. Losing faith was a horrible thing.

Primeval had its share of deep mv's too. Goodbyes, tragic ones, with Nick. Goodbyes, regretful but peaceful ones with Jenny. Goodbyes, ripping but temporary ones with Abby and Connor.

She wondered which one she was. If she was a Jenny in this latest goodbye, she needed to pack her things, give hugs, walk off gracefully. There would still be other times, run-in's on Skype, best wishes through times ahead. Her locker could be given to someone else, someone more needed for the time to come. That would be ok. She'd be sad, but there would be closure and a cracked door on the friendship.

She'd felt more like an Abby, though. Always felt more like Abby. A little volatile, too verbal, a little lost in her own world. She'd found a Connor to fall in love with. She'd gone away but not of her own choice. Her locker was still there. And she'd thought she still belonged in that world. Maybe wrongly. Maybe this goodbye, the one she thought she'd never make, wasn't something she had control over. Maybe it would just be better if she cleaned out her locker and left like Jenny, salvaging warmth and shaking hands. Instead of standing in a cold grey room and fighting for what she thought was still hers, like Abby. Maybe she should get on with life.

No.... That was Jenny. She wasn't Jenny. She might walk out for a bit, but she wouldn't clean out her locker. Not in this case. Not for this friendship. You could be lost for a year but not lost out of life.

"And I'll be here in the morning if you say 'Stay'...."