You’re also allowed to leave

I’m not very good at leaving. I overthink it, get (more) awkward (than usual), stay because of the others in the room.

Also I’m terrible at saying goodbye. To help with this today I googled "the art of goodbye" and was rewarded with two romance stories with falling leaves on their covers, a self-help book promising me tools to overcome my inner demon and become a butterfly, a funeral planner in the Netherlands with some beautiful greenery, the grace of goodbye from a Catholic sisterhood and other things I remembered not to get distracted by. To be fair, it was a very generalised search. I didn’t go back and search for "how to say goodbye in your ODT column when you’ve been writing that column for eight years and you’re feeling conflicted about the things you want to say" because. Well. OK, I actually did. But it didn’t help.

It’s a while ago now that I watched an online version of a meeting in Hawea Flat hall, run by Counterspin Media. It was a lot. Would you stay in the room if the person with the mike said "the problem with this country is that women aren’t staying at home looking after their children"? Would you stay in the room while the person with the mike smiled as he said, of a woman, "the bitch wouldn’t die?". Would you stay in the room while the person with the mike talked in a calm and come-on-chaps voice about "Maori land grabbers"? Would you stay in the room through the part about the deep state translation machine that will finally reveal the hidden messages behind what Helen Clark is really, actually saying in her speeches? The camera was on the audience and the local speakers too, and one of my thoughts was why are they staying? Oh, but I stayed too until the credits rolled.

I can tell myself I’m staying here because my viewpoint is different and because it’s important/good/polite to consider other people’s thoughts and because it’s a privilege (to be taken responsibly) to be close to the mike. Also though I share this particular mike with people whose racism, misogyny and transphobia (and that’s just a round up of tea-room and online browsing in the last two weeks) goes unchecked. Life is not an open mike night. Which is honestly just as well. But one thing I like at open mike nights is the bit where someone stands up at the start and says something along the lines of "OK, enjoy yourselves and don’t be racist sexist homophobic transphobic ableist, don’t ‘punch down’, don’t be a dick".

Being sometimes (and mostly, I like to think, accidentally) a dick myself, I’ve learned a lot about writing and a lot about thinking by being allowed to think in this space. Another of the things I’ve absolutely loved is when people get in touch with me about something I’ve written and what it’s meant to them. (Oh wait, mostly. I love it when I learn something from the interchange. And/or feel seen and/or helpful. I’m not so much a fan of the messages advocating self-harm or offering help in inflicting it.) I’m so happy for having had the opportunity to share stuff and things from other people and other places.

Oh. I’m getting incoherent again because it’s getting time to leave. As Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine once sang, "So nothing lasts forever, but then nothing ever did. It’s big but it’s not clever and it’s really not that big". I’m not sure what that means exactly but the nuns recommended sharing a quote to mark the occasion. Bye.