Do you ever feel like the only thing you have in common with most people is a time period?
As people, I think we’d all agree that whether consciously or subconsciously, we are all motivated by the desire to succeed and survive. I go through people pretty quickly- it’s not that I ever really “lose” friends; moreso, it’s that people play a more significant role in certain periods of my life and then they kind of fade into the background. It’s strange to me how I have actually put effort into relationships that I knew had no future, simply because I knew something about that relationship would benefit me for a week, a month, or a couple of years.
A couple of my friends have come back from college after finishing up midterms and I had a really interesting discussion with my two best female friends throughout high school. A common running theme was that post-high school, about 98% of the relationships we had all harvested throughout those four years died out before our eyes, and none of us really cared. Recently, I’ve also been spending more time with “old friends” and in doing so, have realized that with a lot of people from our past, all we really have is the past- and all we can really build with… is the past… and in my opinion, other than mentally affecting you as an individual, discussing the past isn’t going to do much for your future.
Further than that, a few friends I’ve become close with over the past couple of years, I no longer possess much interest in really knowing at all. It’s not that I don’t care about them as individuals, because I do, but I find my attention slipping when attempting engagement with them, finding myself more and more misunderstood and shooting in the dark for connection.
It’s almost as if, for those few months or years you really knew them, they offerred you something that you couldn’t identify anywhere else. And then, in some moment, you realize you’ve developed or that you always had a dormant sense of what you thought you found in them within yourself- and that relationship no longer offers you anything.
For the past few years, I’ve thought of myself as somewhat callous, but honestly, I’m not really that callous; I’m just really accepting of and excited about the fact that things and people change. A lot of people cultivate a great deal of happiness and security from residing in their past, continually making their past present and never really adapting a future. I don’t like nor agree with that.
“I suppose what I’m saying is for a moment in time, you meant the world to me, but the world has changed, and so have I. Let’s no longer dally in the memories of what was and think about all the ‘could have beens’ because everything that happened happened because it was right. I have no regrets. We are all each our own whole, and sometimes we collide into another whole and realize we make a better whole while knit together. Sometimes our relationships drive on massochism- we’ll use one another until we’re worn into the ground, but know it’s what we both claimed we wanted. Sometimes I carry you on my back until you’re stable enough to walk on your own, and sometimes you have carried me. But here we are and all that is behind us is time passed, and all that is before us is now.”
