When I left my hometown in Lincoln, Nebraska to move to Yale in August 2022, my three best friends woke up at 2:00 a.m. to send me off at the airport. They made a “Goodbye Clar” playlist filled with sad songs, beginning with “Slipping Through My Fingers” by ABBA. We arrived early to Omaha, and they waited with me as we cried silently for an hour. It was dramatic. I glanced back at Anna, Ben and Lily as I walked through security, sobbing so much that I almost missed my flight. I wanted to stand there and look at them forever. For the first time in my months-long excitement of getting into Yale, I wondered, “What if I stayed home?”

Of course, that was a silly thought born from high emotions. But still, I didn’t see them for 6 months, and every time I’ve returned home since, my old friendships have never felt the same. 

At the beginning of freshman summer, my aunt and I visited my mom in Japan. After 2 weeks, they dropped me off at Osaka airport for my first-ever completely solo trip. I would spend the next three months backpacking across the Middle East, Europe and Morocco. Without looking them in the eye, I hugged my mom and aunt goodbye in Osaka, and headed off to a sushi restaurant in the basement of the airport. 

At the end of sophomore year, I visited my then-boyfriend in the U.S. On my last morning, he woke up at 4:00 a.m. to drive me to the airport to fly to China. Our goodbye was quick — just a hug and a kiss, nothing more. I looked back as I handed my passport to the TSA officer, and cried again. His familiar face faded away behind the roped-off line. 

One month later, I said another goodbye. After meeting up with my parents in China, they dropped me off at the Shanghai airport for the beginning of my four-month adventure in Southeast Asia. We talked all the way until I reached the gate. It wasn’t until I landed in Vietnam a few hours later that I received text photos from my mom of my back turned on the jet bridge.

Last August, my host family in Queensland was kind enough to drive me 1 hour to the airport. Charles and Julie had become like my Aussie grandparents, and they hugged me tight as I stood by the curb with 15 pounds on my back. “Come back soon,” they said, “you have a home here.” I turned away and walked towards security without saying a word. 

As much as it sounds like it, I’m not a crybaby. It’s just that ever since I started solo traveling, I created a rule to “never look back” at airports. When some random city unexpectedly becomes “home” — filled with memories, for which I’ve memorized the entire map, and I know which block I’ve lived in — I fear that if I look back, I might just be standing on the curb forever, torn between moving forward and staying behind. 

I guess the moral of this story is that people change, time is real, and life moves on. How silly do I have to be, to keep saying goodbye over and over again? It never gets easier. As humans, it’s only natural to wonder, “What if I stayed? What if I never left?” I like to remind myself that with every goodbye comes a new adventure. I trust the universe enough to believe that no matter where I go, something will come along to make the pain of leaving worth it. 

As my GLBL 275 International Security professor says, we can only ever “theorize about the counterfactual,” because realistically, you already bought the plane ticket, and you can’t experience an alternative universe where you stayed alongside reality.

So… should you look back at airports? I still haven’t figured out the perfect formula to saying goodbye—probably because it doesn’t exist. On one hand, marching forward keeps the goodbye short and painless. Out of sight, out of mind. On the other hand, what if it’s your last time seeing someone? What if you never plan on returning? Then maybe it is worth a final glance, to look back while you still can. 

There’s really only one thing I’ve ever wanted from airports, in this whole business of goodbyes and country-hopping and finding new places to collect lore. I want someone to pick me up at the end. I want to know that there’s someone waiting for me on the other side, holding a sign with my name on it — bonus if they have flowers, extra bonus if the sign is big — face pressed against the glass, waving and smiling as I walk through customs. 

Only one person has known me well enough to do that, and it’s my mom. On the question of goodbyes, all I can say for certain is that I owe a thank you letter to my parents, who pick me up without fail from OMA every year, holding the same, aged, yellow, “Welcome Home, Clarissa” sign painted in 2018 when I first left Nebraska for a summer camp in Baltimore. On the back of the sign, my mom has marked down the dates every time she’s picked me up, and from where I’m flying in. 

And that’s all I can ask for, really.