10/28/24

 "If it isn't directly in front of me, I forget it exists", something I have said time and time again. While on one hand object permanence is a real issue which I won't claim to actually have, I do think there is enough to be said about the struggle that exists within some people to form the proper relationships to things, and in a proper way. Typically, when I say such a thing, it doesn't come from a place of ill intent, much less from a place of true sincerity or that I actually have a lapse in memory. Rather I express such a feeling revolving around the people and things in my life that I know in the deepest depths of my heart my true feelings for, but ones that simply aren't in my life every single day. 

I used to have a recurring nightmare when I was younger than I could put a number, of myself standing in an all-white landscape, surrounded by a circular train track. My Mom would be there, hugging me, holding my hand, or simply a presence I felt without a logical reason as most dreams operate, before she would board the train, and leave me alone watching as the train grew further away. Despite the track being circular, and therefore knowing the train would inevitably return to the same spot, I would choose to chase it down, never catching it but consequently also running further from where the train would stop as it had before. This dream, from a total of three or four that I can recall in vivid detail, always stuck in the back of my mind, but it wasn't until I was well in my teen years when the subconscious mind and crystals and astrology consumed most of what I thought about on the daily, that I started to think about it with enough significance to actually start to figure out what meaning it could've had. An important detail to consider is that, at that time, not only had my parents been divorced, but my Dad was remarried, my Mom was working her butt off, and I was gaining enough consciousness to realize I was spending more time with one parent than the other. 

For most of my life, the most important people in it were more or less temporary. Though I know it wasn't everyone's experience at the time, my family was not one to be quick with the trends, and thus unless I was at my Mom's house, or on the rare occasion getting to speak to her on my Dad's landline, I had zero contact with her 26 days out of the month. What's more, unlike most of my friends, I did not have a phone at all until I was 15, constricting seeing anyone other than my family and doing anything other than sitting at home to communicate through parents to friends' parents to friends then back to me, or simply seeing them at school. I learned quickly that attachments were attached whether I spoke to or saw them every day, from the most important people to the best of friends, to peers at school and work. On most occasions, I think of this as a positive, possession of the ability to feel fondly and strongly about those I love with or without constant reassurance, yet as I grew older, and my attachments matured on all fronts, the way in which I wanted to maintain them felt different. While I still remained consistent in my set-in ways, knowing that my feelings for someone were typically not wavered by constant communication on my or the recipient's part, newer friends included newer ways of growing up that I did not share, and those feelings of mutual respect regardless of interaction became rapidly less consistent. 

I was in the mind that at a certain age, maturity would kick in with everyone at the same level, and that feelings were something that only required verbalization when it called for it; when feelings changed. But as I continued to grow, acting in ways I thought a 16, 18, or 20-year-old should act, it became apparent that not everyone was always at the same stage. Not to claim I am a rare case of profound maturity, surpassing that of most of the people around me, but rather that I was shocked to find the vast differences in the way in which grown adults expressed maturity, and what's more, how they acted on it. I would express disinterest in attending an event, neither a symbol of my feelings toward the person holding it nor the one who invited me, and find myself at the bitter receiving end of a cold shoulder because it seems like I don't want to be friends anymore. Or on the contrary, I would invite someone to attend an event with me, their response similarly being that of disinterest, and would come to find that they were indeed avoiding me altogether. But neither of which occasion was anything said that would directly influence such disinterest as being interpreted in the way that it was. 

As these occurrences grew more frequent, from high school in which such lack of dictation felt more acceptable, all the way to adulthood, my attachments wavered, becoming less consistent within myself, much less with those around me. It was all rubbing off on me. Within the last few years, I've noticed an attachment to less physical objects, growing stronger in the way of feelings, emotions, 'vibes', and a longing to experience something that is already long gone. I'm attached to my room, and the decorations I've accumulated in my time spent there, I'm attached to my schedule, planning most activities to the T to have just the smallest sense of knowing what comes next throughout my day, and I'm attached to the people I know to bring that into my life, the ones who can go weeks without a word with me without it having any deeper meaning than simply being busy. 

Attachments are neither positive nor negative aspects of life, more so they are things that keep us grounded in the repetition of positive and negative things. As a generation, we are all acutely aware of most aspects of everything, or we think we are, and thus it feels like the easy route to suggest a pattern in the way we go about things. Lack of quick responses means avoidant, clingy means anxious, or rather things come and go, and it all derives from a desire to feel good and consistently.