People Change

This has been a learning week, one where I found myself face to face with realities I never wanted to have to face up to. Normally, I would save this for one of my "What I’ve Learned" but this is more than I can fit into a few glibly packaged words or lines, so here is what I’ve learned this week:

Now, to begin, I claim no form of expertise on human relationships or anything of the sort. I just kind of cruise through my own life, try not to fuck up anyone else’s too badly (we’ve talked about this), and hopefully have a little bit of fun and a few laughs along the way.

But I’ve been around for a while now, and I’ve done a few things and been to a few places. I have picked some stuff up along the way, I would like to think. Funny thing is, none of it really prepared me for this.

People change. We all know that. Am I the same person i was a long time ago? or even last month? Not at all. I am changing all of the time, and so are most of you. Yeah, sure, some folk are quite happy to live indolently on their couch and never change or do anything, but I hope to never be one of them.

But sometimes people do more than change. Sometimes they go away altogether, and get replaced by someone you don’t even know. Sure, this new person looks awfully familiar, but they are someone else. The best parts have been replaced with things you don’t know, and don’t want to know. The person you knew is gone.

And that’s just a cast-iron bitch of a thing to have to face up to. It really is. And you will do anything you can not to face up to it. For the sake of how much you care for this person, you will let your self-respect take second place, again and again and again. Because you are holding out for the notion that your person might come back.

And that is the very worst part of it, because every now and then, you see a glimpse of that person, a shadow or a ghost of who they used to be. You will here it is a turn of phrase, in a laugh, in the sudden easy flow of a conversation, and BOOM doesn’t your heart just flower with hope all over again, at the idea that maybe he or she is still in there, and if you hold out a little bit longer, try a little bit harder, you might be able to bring them out.

But they are just gone, and you will get your heart broken over and over and over again by trying, and every single time the heartbreak is fresh and bloody and fucking horrible, like the very first time it ever happened.

Or you can endure the one massive heartbreak of finally having to turn away and move on, and just god-damn get on with your life. And sure, the next asshole who tells you that time will heal all wounds is within a hare’s breath of getting a good kick in the balls from you, but I guess that sooner or later, it proves to be true.I sure do hope it does, anyways.