On Leaving
A phraseology, or cliche that often comes up in circumstances of bereavement is that it 'puts things in perspective' which it does. When you parents drop hundreds of dollars to fly down and hundreds more on hail mary passes to try and save a dog's life, that's where you discover what money is actually good for.
The thing is, if I didn't always have this perspective, of what matters and what doesn't, it certainly has stuck with me. Perspective, once gained, I haven't lost. There's of course much perspective I still lack. This blog would have concluded among other things if that twerent the case... but I can distinctly recall getting off the bus from Echuca the choice transport for the majority of my highschool peers from our 'schoolies' in a campsite along the River Murray, grabbing my bag from the undercarriage and then taking a moment to soak in the distinct lack of gravitas of this occassion. Many of these people I was never going to see again, despite having shared more or less our daily lives together for anywhere between 6 and 2 years (depending on arrival at the school) even a year of sharing a class together is a significant fraction of an 18 year old's formative years.
The point was I walked away from that bus dejected. I knew rationally that it all had to end sometime, indeed that's what the fucking trip was about. However, I felt like most people were pretty blaze about it. And sure, my closer friends we kept in touch, but even the mere associates, were part of the village and that village was dispersing now. We've been lucky so far as I know, and probably in part, owing to a healthy school culture at the time, only one of our peers to my knowledge died tragically young. However:
I always know there are some people I quite like that I've possibly seen for the last time. I'm not consumed by morbid thoughts though, because worse than the tragedy of untimely deaths are the people we lose to mind numbing routine - The high school peers that just don't bother to come to the school reunions. The friends that get pre-occupied with their small business and disappear for years into it, or the friends that take an international job posting because it seems like a great opportunity. Or even most banal of all, the friends who are simply tired because they had a long day at work... week after week after week. The ones that don't feel any nagging depressing or crippling anxiety, but just need to space out at the end of the day in front of the TV or computer.
We lose touch. As most of my friends know, because I have been quite public about it, and keep mentioning it in conversation to just about everyone, my oldest friend died recently. The grief of course is ongoing, but at his funeral, even before that, one thing that did get hit home was that I was one of the lucky ones.
Except again it wasn't luck. I made a bunch of choices that I attribute to perspective, and maybe having that persepecting is a great stroke of luck, but I had actually recently retired after 10 exhibitions, from writing personalized invites to just about everyone I know.
At the end of year 12, (but before the bus trip to Echuca) I somewhat faceitiously said in a speech 'make sure you tell everyone how you feel about them, between now and when one of you dies' it was of course a joke, based on the uselessness of that deadline, but I actually for the most part, have followed through on that.
Thus on 10 or so occasions I actually put in writing exactly what James meant to me, that I loved him, who he was to me. He knew all that. Then he died. I was even luckier I guess, because I got ever so briefly to sit with him in the dark hole he was in. I didn't know then whether he was going to leave us or not, I just hoped to fuck he didn't, but I got the chance to tell him face to face who he was to me, how I felt about it all. He said it helped him, evidently it wasn't enough.
Thing is, most of the time, most of the people aren't lucky at all. They may in fact be extremely unlucky to have someone die or disappear on them when the last transaction was a fight or some shit. Alas, I fear the less dramatic, because a fight at least is an invitation to repair.
We just lose touch, we lose touch because we lack perspective. For the most part, absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Even now with the mere distance of three weeks I can feel the natural migration of interest away from my circumstance as I become less relevant to many of my friends day to day. This isn't to say they are bad people, they are simply living day to day.
I know, empirically from doing 10 exhibitions, that we get the most support, the most social benefit from people whose lives we are involved in. If there's any silver lining to leaving, withdrawing, disappearing it's perhaps the opportunity to translate that old adage 'character is who we are when noone is watching' or at least 'when we think noone is watching' the people who do touch base, who keep in touch when I have taken a backseat in relevance to their lives are people that have something special going on with their frontal cortex - they are maintaining an incredible amount of social pathways in their brain. Most of us invest most of our energy in 5 or 30. People who keep in touch are truly special, but I don't expect everyone to be special. In face if I did, I wouldn't try to be special and write a fuckton of invites every 6 - 12 months.
People aren't necessarily dying on us, they are simply going away for awhile, and sometimes banal as the going away is, that going away is forever.
I hate leaving, most of the time nothing happens. I've gone away for the summer and come back months later to find everyone looks ridiculous with their tans. I've gone away for the winter and come back to a workplace where more old colleagues had returned than quit.
What I find difficult is giving up my physical space. To me it's a space where my personality actually manifests in a tangible way. Like a mirror it gives me a sense of self that is disorienting to go without.
There's also the aspect that while I'm sure there are some scant few who actually feel the missing of me, family and such. I'm generally leaving behind absolutely everyone.
The perspective I have is that when people ask me if I'm excited about my trip, the honest answer is always 'I will be' because I will be after the leaving is out of the way. I hate leaving. I can't emphasize it enough. The people who are excited for me, whom are presumambly doing their best to live vicariously through me when they ask as to my excitement levels - a perceive to be thinking of how nice it would be to leave their lives for a while which is to say, the extent of their affect forecasting is to consider say, being in Mexico as a hedonic alternative to what they are doing right now, which might be hour 6 of a 7 hour cold calling weekend shift. In which case, yes, I'd be excited if I could say 'energize' into my wristwatch and be beamed off into a tropical paradise and escape the labors I've agreed to undertake for cash.
But that isn't the deal, and leaving for a decent chunk of time means you don't get to go on holiday without giving up your job, your peers, your social connection, your sense of identity, all of that. Sounds emo and dramatic right.
Consider this as perspective, you are about to have a baby, you're first baby. Is it exciting? yes! of course it is, but it also is an irreversible turning of the page in your life. Not only are you possessed of the knowledge that barring some tragic onset of mental health issues, you are going to meet the person you love more than anyone else in the world. You are also going to become a parent and that means you are no longer going to be the independent and irresponsible adult you are currently.
I feel, that there is room to have both. It is not a betrayal of the child to acknowledge that by having them you are going to lose something of yourself - you choose to lose that something. No need to pretend you don't care about losing it though.
So too do I find the task of being excited about a trip that lies at the other side of leaving a betrayal of self. I'm choosing to go, and sure, I generally choose to travel because it makes me uncomfortable, but even if I was one of those people that has a picture of myself snowboarding or riding a horse as my tinder profile, I would still hate fucking leaving.
Life isn't bad enough for me to want to leave it all behind. I have to remove myself like removing tape from a hairy leg.
I'll do it. But I don't have to like it.
The thing is, if I didn't always have this perspective, of what matters and what doesn't, it certainly has stuck with me. Perspective, once gained, I haven't lost. There's of course much perspective I still lack. This blog would have concluded among other things if that twerent the case... but I can distinctly recall getting off the bus from Echuca the choice transport for the majority of my highschool peers from our 'schoolies' in a campsite along the River Murray, grabbing my bag from the undercarriage and then taking a moment to soak in the distinct lack of gravitas of this occassion. Many of these people I was never going to see again, despite having shared more or less our daily lives together for anywhere between 6 and 2 years (depending on arrival at the school) even a year of sharing a class together is a significant fraction of an 18 year old's formative years.
The point was I walked away from that bus dejected. I knew rationally that it all had to end sometime, indeed that's what the fucking trip was about. However, I felt like most people were pretty blaze about it. And sure, my closer friends we kept in touch, but even the mere associates, were part of the village and that village was dispersing now. We've been lucky so far as I know, and probably in part, owing to a healthy school culture at the time, only one of our peers to my knowledge died tragically young. However:
I always know there are some people I quite like that I've possibly seen for the last time. I'm not consumed by morbid thoughts though, because worse than the tragedy of untimely deaths are the people we lose to mind numbing routine - The high school peers that just don't bother to come to the school reunions. The friends that get pre-occupied with their small business and disappear for years into it, or the friends that take an international job posting because it seems like a great opportunity. Or even most banal of all, the friends who are simply tired because they had a long day at work... week after week after week. The ones that don't feel any nagging depressing or crippling anxiety, but just need to space out at the end of the day in front of the TV or computer.
We lose touch. As most of my friends know, because I have been quite public about it, and keep mentioning it in conversation to just about everyone, my oldest friend died recently. The grief of course is ongoing, but at his funeral, even before that, one thing that did get hit home was that I was one of the lucky ones.
Except again it wasn't luck. I made a bunch of choices that I attribute to perspective, and maybe having that persepecting is a great stroke of luck, but I had actually recently retired after 10 exhibitions, from writing personalized invites to just about everyone I know.
At the end of year 12, (but before the bus trip to Echuca) I somewhat faceitiously said in a speech 'make sure you tell everyone how you feel about them, between now and when one of you dies' it was of course a joke, based on the uselessness of that deadline, but I actually for the most part, have followed through on that.
Thus on 10 or so occasions I actually put in writing exactly what James meant to me, that I loved him, who he was to me. He knew all that. Then he died. I was even luckier I guess, because I got ever so briefly to sit with him in the dark hole he was in. I didn't know then whether he was going to leave us or not, I just hoped to fuck he didn't, but I got the chance to tell him face to face who he was to me, how I felt about it all. He said it helped him, evidently it wasn't enough.
Thing is, most of the time, most of the people aren't lucky at all. They may in fact be extremely unlucky to have someone die or disappear on them when the last transaction was a fight or some shit. Alas, I fear the less dramatic, because a fight at least is an invitation to repair.
We just lose touch, we lose touch because we lack perspective. For the most part, absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Even now with the mere distance of three weeks I can feel the natural migration of interest away from my circumstance as I become less relevant to many of my friends day to day. This isn't to say they are bad people, they are simply living day to day.
I know, empirically from doing 10 exhibitions, that we get the most support, the most social benefit from people whose lives we are involved in. If there's any silver lining to leaving, withdrawing, disappearing it's perhaps the opportunity to translate that old adage 'character is who we are when noone is watching' or at least 'when we think noone is watching' the people who do touch base, who keep in touch when I have taken a backseat in relevance to their lives are people that have something special going on with their frontal cortex - they are maintaining an incredible amount of social pathways in their brain. Most of us invest most of our energy in 5 or 30. People who keep in touch are truly special, but I don't expect everyone to be special. In face if I did, I wouldn't try to be special and write a fuckton of invites every 6 - 12 months.
People aren't necessarily dying on us, they are simply going away for awhile, and sometimes banal as the going away is, that going away is forever.
I hate leaving, most of the time nothing happens. I've gone away for the summer and come back months later to find everyone looks ridiculous with their tans. I've gone away for the winter and come back to a workplace where more old colleagues had returned than quit.
What I find difficult is giving up my physical space. To me it's a space where my personality actually manifests in a tangible way. Like a mirror it gives me a sense of self that is disorienting to go without.
There's also the aspect that while I'm sure there are some scant few who actually feel the missing of me, family and such. I'm generally leaving behind absolutely everyone.
The perspective I have is that when people ask me if I'm excited about my trip, the honest answer is always 'I will be' because I will be after the leaving is out of the way. I hate leaving. I can't emphasize it enough. The people who are excited for me, whom are presumambly doing their best to live vicariously through me when they ask as to my excitement levels - a perceive to be thinking of how nice it would be to leave their lives for a while which is to say, the extent of their affect forecasting is to consider say, being in Mexico as a hedonic alternative to what they are doing right now, which might be hour 6 of a 7 hour cold calling weekend shift. In which case, yes, I'd be excited if I could say 'energize' into my wristwatch and be beamed off into a tropical paradise and escape the labors I've agreed to undertake for cash.
But that isn't the deal, and leaving for a decent chunk of time means you don't get to go on holiday without giving up your job, your peers, your social connection, your sense of identity, all of that. Sounds emo and dramatic right.
Consider this as perspective, you are about to have a baby, you're first baby. Is it exciting? yes! of course it is, but it also is an irreversible turning of the page in your life. Not only are you possessed of the knowledge that barring some tragic onset of mental health issues, you are going to meet the person you love more than anyone else in the world. You are also going to become a parent and that means you are no longer going to be the independent and irresponsible adult you are currently.
I feel, that there is room to have both. It is not a betrayal of the child to acknowledge that by having them you are going to lose something of yourself - you choose to lose that something. No need to pretend you don't care about losing it though.
So too do I find the task of being excited about a trip that lies at the other side of leaving a betrayal of self. I'm choosing to go, and sure, I generally choose to travel because it makes me uncomfortable, but even if I was one of those people that has a picture of myself snowboarding or riding a horse as my tinder profile, I would still hate fucking leaving.
Life isn't bad enough for me to want to leave it all behind. I have to remove myself like removing tape from a hairy leg.
I'll do it. But I don't have to like it.
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