Attachment

I don't think that I have much to write right now. It's just that it's been a while and I can feel myself sort of twitching. The twitch means I need to write. Something.
I have found a new consequence to this whole non permanent living thing. It seems that my personal relationships are the newest victim. Well, I don't suppose they're the newest victim. Just the most recently discovered.
My first year here was magic. Sparkly and warm and intense in the way you want every moment in your life to be intense. I felt that entire year down to my toes. I still feel a cliched, cosmic connection with the people I met then, even though I have not seen many of them since. At that point, I didn't know what life I was about to high-dive into. I didn't know to keep at least a small canyon in between them and myself, so they had something so deep to fall into when they left that I had a hard time remembering what it was like when they were right in front of me. It hurts without the canyon. Without the canyon, you can see them get smaller as they walk away. You see them the whole time.
So after that first year, I watched all the people I fell in love with get smaller. And I started digging.
Admittedly, there is not much I remember from college. But I paid attention in my Eastern Philosophy class, where I learned that The Tao of Pooh is amazing and that attachment is a chief cause of suffering. That did not make sense to my 20 year old brain, but I think it's sinking in a little more now. If you realize that all thing are non permanent, (except for Sharpies and the smell of burned popcorn in your microwave) then you will not become attached to them and, thus, will not suffer when they are gone, as they inevitably will be. It's not about coldness. It's not about feeling less or keeping any distance in the moment. It's about living in reality and not trying to constantly convince yourself that the life in your relationships is enough to keep them going forever. You learn quickly that you really have no knowledge of the future. You don't know who will fall out of your life, or back in. You don't know which relationships were real and which were simply the result of unique, like circumstance. You're blind in a dark room, to be frank, and there really is no way to tell.
So now, with Bon Iver in my ears and another generation of migrants going on their way, I am wondering how anyone can make it work. Like I said, it's not about coldness, and an arm's length is too much distance for a true friendship. But how, when you know that you don't know, do you get close? There is not much of me dedicated to self preservation, but the tiny bit of me that is tends to scream loudly and flash bright colors when it feels threatened. And in the spirit of any self preservation, I have cooled down a bit, haven't I? The arm's length gets longer and the canyon gets deeper and this, I'm finding, is what causes suffering. The anticipation of pain. The prevention of it, even to the detriment of my own experience. I need to forget what it's like to say goodbye. I need to do that high-dive with my eyes closed and my arms out like I did that first year, when I didn't give myself enough time to think about how deep the water at the end of the dive might be.
The whole "Live in now" thing is overused and its sheen has faded some as a result. Every new-age guru and guru lover says, "Live in now!" But I suppose every overused phrase would have been abandoned early if it did not hold some truth that people, for whatever reason, can't quite come to on their own.
At the end of every long day, I would much rather be sad to see someone go then to not feel anything when they do. I worked hard on that canyon, damnit, and I want to get some use out of it. Even if it hurts. Hell, especially if it hurts.


Dear Universe: Please let me feel this year. The whole thing.
Thank you.