The biggest thing I've never been able to shake since I was a kid, was getting comfortable with life being a certain way before it shifts dramatically. My grandparents always lived around the corner growing up, and I assumed they'd always be there. Then within a calendar year, they both died suddenly. My middle brother died suddenly when he was 3. These experiences have a way of shaping my relationships in a manner I hadn't truly contemplated until this year.
Whenever it's a birthday, I have family members that cling to a particular memory or set of nostalgia that's no longer true. When I visit home, my mom assumes I still like things I used to enjoy a decade ago because she hasn't spent enough time with me as an adult to know what I'm into now. It's not that I don't share it, it's just that she doesn't remember or know. Because my kid has never lived with me, I don't have the benefit of these kinds of memories to cling to. All I have is what's contemporary, and what we can share in the present. In many ways, the greatest gift we have is the need to be consistent because we've been out of each other's lives before and know what that's like. It's just a lot worse now, because you know what it feels like when it's sorta cohesive.
The hardest thing I had to contemplate last month was the ways that successive relationships often imploded because I could see them as non-viable. Rather than do the work to make them potentially sustainable, or just short-circuiting the interactions while they still felt good, I would often drag them out until there's no air left like a kid with a birthday balloon in their room. After it's over, I inevitably amplify the good parts in my brain and negate anything bad or questionable that ever happened. I also spend a lot of time berating myself over the lost potential. Sometimes, I'll go as far as trying to glue together whatever was left behind like it's some kind of puzzle.
Modern life has taught me that people move on. Whether it's glacially or rapidly, but they advance. Even if someone gazes at you through the window as they pass down the road, they're not looking back. I would sometimes mistake this wistfulness as a need for a life preserver, only to discover I was not valuing the gift of my own circumstances. Experiences can be teachers. Relationships can be simple transits in orbits not meant to last forever, but for a moment. Perhaps the magic of comments that only orbit Earth every 99 years is to teach us that something beautiful doesn't have to last forever, and that if we experience it, it can live forever in our hearts.
Drafted while listening to Never Is a promise by Fiona Apple
Whenever it's a birthday, I have family members that cling to a particular memory or set of nostalgia that's no longer true. When I visit home, my mom assumes I still like things I used to enjoy a decade ago because she hasn't spent enough time with me as an adult to know what I'm into now. It's not that I don't share it, it's just that she doesn't remember or know. Because my kid has never lived with me, I don't have the benefit of these kinds of memories to cling to. All I have is what's contemporary, and what we can share in the present. In many ways, the greatest gift we have is the need to be consistent because we've been out of each other's lives before and know what that's like. It's just a lot worse now, because you know what it feels like when it's sorta cohesive.
The hardest thing I had to contemplate last month was the ways that successive relationships often imploded because I could see them as non-viable. Rather than do the work to make them potentially sustainable, or just short-circuiting the interactions while they still felt good, I would often drag them out until there's no air left like a kid with a birthday balloon in their room. After it's over, I inevitably amplify the good parts in my brain and negate anything bad or questionable that ever happened. I also spend a lot of time berating myself over the lost potential. Sometimes, I'll go as far as trying to glue together whatever was left behind like it's some kind of puzzle.
Modern life has taught me that people move on. Whether it's glacially or rapidly, but they advance. Even if someone gazes at you through the window as they pass down the road, they're not looking back. I would sometimes mistake this wistfulness as a need for a life preserver, only to discover I was not valuing the gift of my own circumstances. Experiences can be teachers. Relationships can be simple transits in orbits not meant to last forever, but for a moment. Perhaps the magic of comments that only orbit Earth every 99 years is to teach us that something beautiful doesn't have to last forever, and that if we experience it, it can live forever in our hearts.
Drafted while listening to Never Is a promise by Fiona Apple
This! wow. I think I used to do this as my norm back in college. I don't know... i just have a good interaction with someone i don't want it to end.
Reading this makes me think that the early deaths that shook your world in a dont ever get too comfortable manner makes it so hard to ever set down your roots.
If you don't set down roots then you might start believing that you don't need to root... you might even begin thinking you aren't a plant. Maybe you're something else?
In my case, right around 30, I'm beginning to see, no i am indeed still a plant that wants to root. Just never felt comfortable rooting. Never had the same life-changing deaths you went through as a kid though. So maybe I feel safer rooting?
What I'm meaning here is getting myself into situations where the balance isn't right, and I use myself to keep someone else afloat regardless of whether it'll cause me to sink. Often, you do that and when you stop hoisting them up, you realize they can keep themselves afloat just fine...and they're less concerned about your swim all along.
stop texting/messaging all the people in your phone and see who reaches out to you. See how many dead plants you're watering.