There are those people who left the deepest of impressions on you, the people you said goodbye to long ago but who still seem to follow you around or linger on your clothes. There are those people who are long gone, either in this world or the next, who still absorb your attention when you go into a daydream. There are those people you still worry about even though you know nothing about their lives anymore, those you're still curious about even after all the years and all the water under the bridge.. There are those people who crashed into you at a certain time in your life and left a piece of themselves lodged inside your rib cage.
And that's ok.
That's natural.
That is a part of the fabric of the human drama.
It doesn't have to mean that you didn't move on or that you're obsessed. It doesn't need to be dysfunctional or morbid if you don't want it to be. It can just mean that you have been touched by the intensity of what it means to share your life with someone, even if the time was brief.
It can mean that you have been forever changed by someone's influence on you and that the power of your metamorphosis holds the echo of its catalyst - the one you left behind, or who left you.
There are those who make all the difference even after the sadness and the loss. You can grieve the broken things and leave them behind and get on with your life, but there is still a part of you which stands on that precipice in your memory and that's ok. I adore my boyfriend more than anyone and I fully intend to spend the rest of my life with him, but that doesn't mean that my past has been erased. My past lives underneath my skin, along with those people who will always quicken my heart for better or worse - the people who have been woven into the tapestry of my timeline.
When someone you shared your every single cell with walks straight past you on a random Wednesday afternoon and floods you with memories like cyclones, let yourself feel it. Sit with it. It is a gift. It means something, not about them but about you.
It's ok to honour the past - the relationships, the days, the nights, the secrets and all the holy vulnerability in that. It's ok to recognise that your story has been shaped by other people's stories - many lines of text cross over out there on the horizon of human experience.
We are not alone. We are with each other. Though the connections may change form or seem to dissolve completely in any recognisable sense, truly we are joined. We clash, crash, connect, embrace and blend. We leave each other bewildered, questioning, longing, infuriated, satiated, illuminated.
It's ok.
It's supposed to be that way.
- for Jamie
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This blog post was inspired by two moments of sad synchronicity and one of the finest moments in modern art. The synchronicity is mine to keep, but the epic modern art moment can be viewed here:
