Cummings and Goings

When people ask what I’m going to miss most about leaving for Korea, they expect me to say Niko Nikos, H-E-B, or our favorite Japanese BBQ restaurant.

They’re all right, of course.

But the hardest goodbye isn’t Texas.

It’s the people.

They say you spend more waking hours with your coworkers than almost anyone else in your life. I don’t know who “they” are, but they clearly worked in corporate America.

For the last 15 years, Chevron has been more than where I worked. It’s where I grew up. It’s where I learned my job, survived reorganizations, SAP implementations, endless meetings that could’ve been emails, and celebrated weddings, babies, promotions, birthdays, and every Thursday lunch in between.

And somewhere along the way, coworkers became friends.

Real friends.

The kind you text before your spouse. The kind who know exactly what “that meeting” means without you having to explain. The kind who can make you laugh so hard in the middle of a stressful day that you forget why you were stressed in the first place.

People love to say women can’t work together. That female teams are full of drama and competition.

Respectfully… that’s nonsense.

Some of the smartest, funniest, most supportive people I’ve ever met are the women I’ve worked alongside. We celebrated each other’s wins, picked each other up on the hard days, and somehow managed to laugh through even the busiest weeks. We proved every stereotype wrong.

And because Lee works for Chevron too, our worlds overlapped even more. Coworkers became wedding guests, showed up at the hospital when Beckett was born, walked beside us at JDRF (with Lee wearing a purple tutu),  posed for our annual furry friends photo shoots, and cheered us on through every season of life. These weren’t just the people we sat next to from 7 to 5. They became part of our story.

When you spend 15 years with people, they see every version of you.

The newlywed.

The new mom.

The sleep-deprived mom.

The PTO-obsessed mom.

The one trying to hold it all together.

The one pretending she had it all together.

And somehow… they loved me through every version.

So yes, we’re moving halfway around the world. South Korea is going to be the adventure of a lifetime, and I can’t wait to share every bit of it.

But leaving these people? That’s been the hardest part.

I’ve said it over and over these last few weeks, and I’ll probably keep saying it because it’s true.

I have the best coworkers.

I was lucky enough to find a job.

I never expected I’d find lifelong friends.