Every long-term relationship eventually develops departure rituals.
Some are verbal.
Some logistical.
Some so deeply embedded they become almost invisible to the people performing them.
Keys.
Wallet.
Phone.
“Text me when you get there.”
“Do you have your jacket?”
“Drive safe.”
Joy and I hug every single time one of us leaves the apartment.
Not dramatically.
Not lingeringly.
Not like people in war films boarding trains in the 1940s.
Just a small moment of acknowledgement before one person temporarily disappears into the unpredictability of the outside world.
Groceries.
Work.
Meeting friends for drinks.
Collecting parcels.
Whatever.
The ritual remains.
Logically, this is absurd.
One does not require a farewell embrace before visiting the supermarket.
And yet humans appear strangely unwilling to allow one another to depart entirely unceremoniously.
Perhaps because, beneath all the scheduling and routine and modern infrastructure, we remain faintly aware that every departure contains the smallest possible element of uncertainty.
Not fear exactly.
Just probability.
Which is perhaps why even very emotionally restrained people still perform these tiny protective rituals around one another constantly.
The hand on the shoulder.
The kiss at the doorway.
The wave from the car.
The “drive safe” text sent despite contributing absolutely nothing measurable to road conditions.
Love, increasingly, seems less like dramatic declaration and more like repetitive acts of low-level emotional risk management.
I notice this extends beyond romantic relationships too.
Recently after drinks, I hugged Nathan goodbye outside the bar, triggering the now familiar choreography in which Nathan — being substantially taller than me — must bend slightly at the knees to prevent me embracing him somewhere around the lower ribcage or navel.
It is a manoeuvre we both now perform with the quiet efficiency of a ritual refined through repetition.
Again:
completely ridiculous.
And yet somehow deeply human.
Perhaps civilisation itself depends less upon grand gestures than upon these tiny repeated acknowledgements that:
I would notice if you failed to return.
Anyway.
Drive safe.
— g