This is part 2 of a series. If you would like to read the first part, click below
There is always more in the moments after we part, as if the little remnants of connection weren't severed by distance or decision, a lingering whisper that believes we were still close enough for words.
Is it more sad when we made the choice to leave or when it was made by forces of finality, judgments from creation itself?
Is it even worth comparison?
It sure is easier and more justifiable to get mad at a human than dogma or unexplainable forces. Physical things are easier to blame and attack.
Thanks universe…
At least humans can try to explain why they’re so cruel.
We flippantly choose to part ways, but holding on is no better. Either choice could be equally as terrible, so how is one to choose? More often the decision is revealing of our values and the lessons we are yet to learn—a representation of the current stage of our development. Experiences are but snapshots of our current perception, memories of them like a scrapbook, allowing us to flip through the mental states with an emotional dredge and believe for a few moments that we know what imaginary things of the past feel like. The entirety of what happened is often veiled by a confusion that the details are truth, when really they are representations of our reactive state at the time—something even less trustworthy than the emotions which branded our memory.
It's like I'm painting you in my imagination, but not like we are a separate thing. Like you are the paints and the world is the brush and I am the artist, not in a rush. It's not that one thing makes a piece of art special. It’s not you or me or the scenery. It's how you sit in the middle, how the colors drip imperfect, how I get to watch because that something… that something special melts it all together.
so I can’t help but stare longingly, knowing someday soon you won't be there.
Brief moments of deluded dependability are cozy enough for us to forget the inevitable.
It is coming... sooner than we wish
No matter how long they last, these experiences end too soon. We can amass reasons why it was too early: age, qualities of goodness and beauty, work still to be done… the list goes on. We could be so very wrong about all the reasons, but even if we were right about everything, omniscience couldn’t convince us that it was better that they should go. As gods we’d still come up with reasons for them to stay. There isn’t a good reason, a good trade, or anything to negotiate. It sucks, and we’re left with all the emotions nobody asked for.
Life is an eerie empty without a centerpiece
and so here I sit, finding sharpeners without pencils, paints without a brush, and a road without a beat to match—a heart to flutter on alone.
It is said that even after we drift apart, love is still carried in the heart wherever we go, as if they never left. It’s a nice sentiment, but heart doesn't feel as full without a resonant reflection of that love. No matter how strong, a trampled heart reaches for a new harmony.
No wonder break-up songs are so painfully delicious.
I don't use any of this as reason to reminisce, the mind will torture us that way anyways. The love we thought was special isn't for us to hold onto a hope that their return, or someone similar, would return us to that state.
It’s relieving to think that there could be something better on the horizon, that the space left from that love is now ready for someone else. All sorts of ideas surface: that someone better is coming, that that other person wasn't “the one,” or that we are more free without the burden of all those extra yucky “needs” interrupting our life plan. From a deeper place there is an ember still living, one that crackles and pops, sizzling in our internal ear. It hisses quietly, reminding us that nothing could match the etchings on our soul from someone who knew exactly where to carve.
All eventualities must be honored. Something better might not be coming. Something the same is not. What’s coming is the next person you are to be, as some combination of trauma and strength, a defeated realization from it all, inspiring growth through determination to take another step.
Not everything is a lesson, some pains must simply be endured.
Embers don’t feel like enough, especially when so recently we were engulfed by passionate infernos. So we’re presented with an opportunity to use that ember as our only fuel to keep inching towards a future of singular certainty. Though it is rarely acknowledged, the destination we are all rushing towards is a lonely end. At least we’re given a chance at connection while wandering with new friends.
“We’re all just walking each other home.”
People have always been carriers of a feeling of homeliness in my life. Without them, secure spaces and stable years encourage anxiety. No place matches the warmth of the right person. No accomplishment is worth losing that.
Stability is a myth that lives just long enough to lull us into a deeper delusion of our security in this chaotic existence.
All of life just isn’t as bright when I look around wishing I could share the gift. Moments of awe and inspirational rapture feel empty. Best times can feel worse than the worst when nobody is around to share the excitement.
My head darts about as if there was someone to laugh at my mouth hanging loose like a puppet, feeling as though I am floating similarly swinging silly and awkwardly bouncing around in show that I finally found some joy in this dark universe.
I wish for a joyful shout to explode from me, but as I look about I am reminded that any noise I would make would be no more than a vibration between the trees. Even if one fell in Earthly significance, nobody would hear my screams.
Any noise I make would be less than noise without someone to hear it.
Though we are inspired to magnetize and express a feeling of closeness physically, even proximity cannot transcend the distance of falling apart. When misunderstood, even if you are sitting right next to someone, the loudest scream wouldn’t close the distance. That may be why arguments have so much yelling. We’re trying to overcome how far it feels like we’ve drifted apart. When we’ve experienced what it means to share intimacy without needing words at all, the relative shift makes us desperately louder.
She lived 10 minutes down the road, but always felt so inexplicably far away.
I wished she was farther… at least there would be some excuse.
But I knew, maybe she did too—distance would never be enough—I would search worlds for lifetimes, and beyond what I could see, for a chance to feel the closeness that was us. For the smallest chance I’d sacrifice… all that I thought was me.
There’s really no solving that distance. At our core we are all fundamentally connected, but the layers of history and attributes distract us from loving each other despite our exterior differences. The distance between those differences morph what you thought was the perfect person into a disgusting monster.
People live in phases, how we encounter them is less a condemnation of who are they are and more of an opportunity to live that fragile lifespan with them, however terribly or wonderfully long it lasts.
Often there are blaring attractive traits so loud that it becomes tricky to listen for the little things—those sneaky little nagging things that surface when passion settles—giving us new reasons to look for more in someone else. Though it sounds nice, you can’t pick and choose which things you want from a person and attempt to filter out the things you don’t like. The strength of a relationship is hardened with time as the gushy feelings fade into practicality. The key that opened pandora’s box begins to appear malignant, poking at all the insecurities entrusted to another fragile ego.
In every interaction we are forced to merge the attractive details that brought us together with the surprise of all the imperfections which make us seem so different.
It’s everything in one: humans connect to each other like they connect metaphysically. The decision to continue feels confusingly cosmic, as if it was a test of the strength of the connection. It is as indescribable as the feeling when loves meet, only after coming up with rationale for it all. So people grapple with it as they do spirituality, a mixture of blind trust and reason. Attempts at scientific analysis come later, when the overwhelming emptiness needs to be filled with something—something that isn't reminders of how much further into loneliness we are drifting. Although it seems impossible to analyze, we do it anyways, because the end is always so bewildering.