I’ve been to enough parties to know how they end.
You know the moment. The lights come up a little too bright. The music stops. The floor is sticky with spilled drinks, and the people who are left are the ones you didn’t really want to talk to in the first place—the clingers, the drunks, the ones who want to “process” the evening.
Most people think they need to announce their departure. They think they need to go around the room, shake every hand, hug every neck, and endure the thirty-minute “Oh, you’re leaving? But why? Stay for one more! Let’s get lunch next week!” bullshit session. They think a goodbye is a negotiation.
I’m here to tell you: It isn’t.
I am a master of the Irish Exit. The French Leave. The Ghost.
I can be in a crowded room one minute, the life of the party, buying rounds, telling stories… and the next minute, I am gone. No wave. No speech. Just a ripple in the air where a man used to be.
And for this, the biggest departure of my life—the move to Vietnam, the final shedding of the American skin—I am planning the ultimate Irish Exit.
I am not throwing a “Going Away” party. I am not inviting my “friends” to a bar to buy me drinks and pretend they’ll miss me. I am not having a tearful family dinner with siblings I haven’t spoken to in a decade or parents who only care about their own bank accounts.
Why?
Because closure is a myth.
It’s a lie invented by Hollywood to make you feel better about the end of the movie. Real life doesn’t have a third act climax with a speech on the tarmac. Real life just… stops.
I don’t need the validation of a goodbye. I don’t need to see the fake sadness in their eyes. I don’t need to hear the empty promises of “We’ll come visit!” (They won’t. They can’t even visit their own dreams; they sure as hell aren’t crossing an ocean to visit mine.)
So here is the plan:
January 2nd. I hand in the badge. I walk out of the office. I don’t send a company-wide email saying “It’s been a journey.” I just leave.
January 31st. I wake up in my empty apartment. The furniture is gone. The keys are on the counter. I take my one bag—the coffin for the old life—and I walk out the door.
I get in the Uber. I don’t look back at the house. I don’t look back at the mountains. I don’t look back at the dust of Tucson.
I go to the airport. I get on the plane. And when the wheels leave the ground, that’s it.
The people who matter—the very, very few who actually give a damn—they already know. We’ve had our quiet moments. We’ve smoked the cigars.
The rest of them? The “Forever” exes, the coworkers, the “Low-Hanging Fruit,” the family ghosts?
Let them wonder.
Let them call my phone and get the “disconnected” message. Let them drive by my house and see a “For Rent” sign. Let them realize, weeks or months later, that the silence isn’t a pause. It’s a permanent condition.
There is a profound, beautiful dignity in just… vanishing. Like a thief in the night who stole his own life back.
I’m not saying goodbye. I’m just… gone.
And the silence I leave behind? That’s my final gift to them. They can fill it with whatever story makes them feel better.
Me? I’ll be busy listening to the ocean.
