It starts with the most mundane things: canceling an embarrassingly-underused gym membership, or realizing that there’s no need to renew another year on the public bike sharing card. One by one, the clocks run out on one thing and another, and the invisible rhythms that take hold when you’ve settled in somewhere slowly begin to fall away.

It’s almost imperceptible at first, and then suddenly you realize that you’ve begun to say actual goodbyes to people, and the milestones start ticking past at an accelerating rate. Particularly around the summer months in Spain, the odds are that some people will be away for long stretches at a time, so you say these goodbyes early, all the while realizing that they’re a prelude to your own imminent departure.

Then, before you know it, you realize you’re doing every ordinary thing for possibly the last time, and everything is thrown into sharp focus. This last trip to the pediatrician, the last commute to work, the last meal at your usual lunch place, all suddenly take on special meaning by virtue of their finality. As you begin to detach yourself bit by bit from the machinery of everyday life, an almost weightless feeling takes hold. You imagine that impending 17-hour flight through limbo, momentarily homeless and with few possessions, before landing on the other side and beginning to shoulder the responsibilities of a new life.

For now, though, each little daily routine demands special recognition, as if to say, “this is your life, as it is now, as it will have been. Remember it.” Which is the real point of goodbyes, after all.