Melancholy Musings

There are those people in life without whom, you’d simply be a different person. Who’ve touched you somehow and have had meaning in your life. Some of these people blaze through, and are only there for what seems like a moment in the grand scheme of things, but touch you so profoundly in that moment that you are forever changed. Then there are those that are there each day…always there, always being. And the impact they have on you is not as striking, because it’s ongoing. But it’s deep. And it becomes like a hollow inside yourself that can only be filled by them.
When I was a child, I was troubled. I was filled with anxiety and doubt and fear. But when I was with my cousins Lynn and Leslie, it all went away, and I quite simply felt free. Even now, I am awed at how naturally we seem to fit together. It’s a rare thing, that kind of understanding of another soul, isn’t it? Rare and beautiful. Something to be cherished.
Jim is another of those souls that has intertwined itself with mine. We’ve been together so long that it seems we’ve never been apart. For better or for worse, we’re linked. He makes me angry. He makes me hurt. And I can’t imagine being without him. He’s just there. And together, we’ve built things. Made things. Made three babies. The hard part is growing them.
Every day I go to work, and there are souls there that I’m thankful for. Some I’ve known forever and some only for a while. We talk and smile and get through our work and our days together, and all the while we’re building, building, building and making little pathways in each other…these little furrows. Trails of our presence.
What we’ll remember from.
There are those souls I go through my life with now, people I work with and play with and somehow work and play become interchangeable. Rachel and I sit together and there is a comfort there that means it’s okay if I’m just me. I don’t have to laugh if it’s not funny. I don’t have to hide my tears if I’m moved. I can be me like I can be me when she isn’t there. But it’s nicer when she is.
There are souls who feel absent, too. The ones I’ve lost touch with…the ones who are far away, and the ones whose hearts are far away. And the holes they used to fill are empty now, and sometimes painfully so. I think of them all, and sometimes when I do, my stomach pulls together in a tight ball and tears form behind my eyes.
The beautiful thing is how utterly separate we all are…though you have left a hole in me, I have no control over whether you come back to fill it up again. I wonder, do I leave these shallow holes in others? Deep ones? Have I left some empty and wanting?
Is there someone now who cares for me, who I care for, and we just…don’t know?
Do we ever truly know what we mean to another?
Do we just trust?
Do we fill these empty spaces with other things? Hobbies? Music? Television shows?
Do we wait, or do we…go on?
I don’t know. But I do know this: I’m thankful for the people in my life. I love them all. I would give my whole self for any of them.
Thank God they don’t realize that…