Wednesday, March 7, 2012

People Are People and Sometimes It Doesn't Work Out.


Sometimes people let you down.

And it’s time that we let them go.

As a packrat, I have so many things that I just don’t need. My room in Syracuse is littered with things that I just can’t throw away. T shirts from every event I’ve ever been to that I won’t even wear to the gym, triple copies of every article I’ve ever published just in case a job interview wants hard copies and plenty of pictures that star someone’s wrist or a blurred action shot that I’m not even sure why they were developed.

I hold onto things because I don’t ever want to forget.

But sometimes you need to forget.  Sometimes friends forget the inside jokes you had, or your secret handshakes. Sometimes first loves get married, and that effectively ends a chapter in your book. Maybe it was one that you had thought closed long ago, but really it wasn’t over until the epilogue.

But sometimes it’s a present thing.

There are too many negative forces in the world, especially for someone like me. As a dreamer, my thoughts wander to every thing that is possible. I want to visit every country in the whole entire world. I know there are over 200 of them, but I still want to. Plenty of people have raised their eyebrows, lips pursed around their judgment.

Going out to clubs, people don’t need to tell me that I’m not the ideal specimen for a scene like that. When men’s eyes graze over me onto the next girl at the bar, it takes me back to middle school, when I used to grease my hair, or leave my shoes untied, desperately trying to fit in, finding I just stuck out more.

Too many people say no, shake their heads and get frustrated with the way I live my life. I can’t say that they don’t effect me. I can’t say that I study the LSATs because I want to be a lawyer. Or that I work out because it makes me feel good. But it makes them more comfortable, being able to say I’m a work in progress. 

Which I am. But not for them.

There’s no room for poison in our lives. No room for haters, as my students would tell you.

Trim the fat in your life. Find your thesis statement, and live by it. Examine your relationships. What do they add?

People think I have so few friends because I have no choice.

Please.

Who wouldn’t want to be my friend?

I don’t have very many because I don’t want them. I would rather have a few friends who support and love me and whom I know completely. I’m not overwhelmingly fond of surprises. I like to know people as well as I can. It makes winning Apples to Apples so much easier.

Sometimes that means letting people go, even ones you never thought you would.

I have to hope that it’s the right thing to do, even if all I want to do as you’re walking away is scream for you to come back.

A cry that never emerges is somewhere inside you too, one that you thought was for me, but turns out isn’t. Turns out I didn’t matter as much as you thought either.

We will someday, just not to each other. 

1 comment:

  1. Love the apples to apples line. You are perf.

    ReplyDelete