Anyone else despise the phrase hump day? Sorry. I do. Or maybe just today. Today, I feel heavy. The kind of heavy that comes with looking at a human whom you have adored for all of your life and saying goodbye. It’s a different kind of goodbye than that reserved for others because it’s not a chosen goodbye. It’s not a goodbye for my betterment. It’s not a goodbye that helps facilitate my growth. It is indeed the way that life works but still, it is the kind of goodbye that is wholly unwelcome and disconcerting.
People stay with us in all different ways. Some folks believe that the way our people stay with us is in a much more present fashion. A spirit, if you will. I can tell you that I got lost in a neighborhood close to me once and I smelled cigars and boom I found my way out (thanks, Papa). I haven’t had that experience too many times and it has never been something that I’ve willed to happen. It has just occurred. And it was all at once welcome and confusing. I’m not a believer in ghosts, but I suppose I believe in something. Something I can’t put a name to. Mostly, I see and feel the people who I’ve said goodbye to in the people who were closest to them. Facial expressions, likes, and dislikes. That thing that feels utterly familiar in someone else. Again, not something I’ve orchestrated or made to happen. Just the way this whole business works.
We can’t determine how someone will stay with us or how a loss will resonate with us, so there is no preparing. There is a profound sort of emptiness to the act of bidding someone farewell forever because we are going through a prescribed set of motions to get to what is mostly an unknown. A scary and undesirable mystery.
I tried to make my goodbye one that was sensical and peaceful. I applied logic to my goodbye. My goodbye was going to be closure.
But then I had to go back again. A second visit. And suddenly I was unsatisfied. A door was opened. I needed more. The moments I had were not a bonus. They were not enough. They were lacking. They represented a taste of something that I now wanted in abundance.
Why?
Because I hadn’t really said goodbye. Not really. I had said what I thought I should say. I had wept. I went through all the motions, but something inside of me did not connect to the other side of that equation. I didn’t actually let go. I feigned letting go without going through with it. I stayed surface. Safe.
This shouldn’t be all that surprising because I’ve clearly made the same mistake in other areas of my life. Bah, I hate to call it a mistake. That implies that there is a regrettable element. That assumes that nothing valuable will emerge from my behavior and the recognition of such. That’s not true. Not even a little.
I took a moment today and I realized that when I want to protect myself from the things that hurt more than anything (like this goodbye I am referring to), I separate my insides from the outside. Terrifyingly enough, I am practiced at this response and so, I give the appearance of full mind-body connection. I seem thoughtful and measured. I appear affected and as if I am processing. I give good face.
Do you know what I mean? Have you done that?
I have a friend who is going through something in her relationships right now. She tells me that she is good but her behavior screams anything but a-okay. That’s not to say that she doesn’t have moments of peace and happiness. That’s to say that while she sorts himself out, she is quietly leaving a path of destruction in her wake. Turned over relationships, unspoken words, and passive aggression like it’s going out of style. I am not saying this because I know what she is feeling or thinking. I am saying this because I have no idea what she is thinking or feeling. She was a human who once shared such things and then, poof. Story time over. A wall of ‘I’m good.’
I don’t judge. I don’t really want to be a part of it, so I’m taking a few steps back, but I don’t think less of him. I just did it. In a different situation. I like to think that I am not hurting anyone in the process, but I don’t support I know who I hurt when I do such things or act that way. Whenever someone’s words and actions are wildly different from what they have always been, or there seems to be erratic inconsistency, either you read them really fucking wrong, or they have severed the connection inside of them as a mechanism of self-protection.
How do we sort out which is what when it comes to other people? Well, we have to take stock of who the person was and who they are and what they mean to us and what we are willing to stomach. Sometimes we have to back away from that person and tell ourselves that if the connection or friendship is ‘meant to be’, it will find us again at some point. Other times, we can get in close and sit and wait for the clouds to clear. Kind of like “I know you are acting like a dick right now, but I also know you are an amazing human, so I’m just gonna wait for that part of you to emerge again.” That’s okay too, but the follow up to that sentence (if you have even a modicum of self-preservation) should be: I still have a bottom line, but as a measure of grace, I’ve moved it a little. So, you have this far and no further. And also, “if the human I know and love doesn’t crawl out when this is all over, I’m not going to hate myself. I will be glad that at the end of the day I have no regrets. I gave it my best shot from a place of love and that is that.”
There are still boundaries to be set within giving someone grace. That looks very different depending on the person and the relationship you have with them. That might be not dropping everything to see them when they have appeared out of no where and want QT. That might be begging out of a conversation when they are taking their frustration or anger out of you. That might be one thousand other behaviors and actions. Your boundaries are just that, yours and yours alone.
Let’s start to try and find them, shall we?
Later skater.
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 