So maybe you loved your idea of the person more than you loved the actual person?
This is always the case. Other beings are fundamentally unknowable. There is always a translation layer between you and them. If you met yourself without knowing it was yourself, or met what you would call ‘yourself’ at a sufficient removal in time, you would still have that layer of separation. Some people are just more keenly aware of it, and some become aware of it in certain situations.
I think about this a lot. People change, obviously, but often it also has to do with how you remember the person and how that changes as well.
So fun story. I knew a guy who was a teetotaler in high school. Dude didn’t even drink coffee. We drifted apart for a few years and got back in touch. He decided to come and visit me. The night he shows up, he drinks 6 500ml beers in an hour and a half, gets weepy, and talks about wanting to strangle his sister. He was with me for almost two weeks.
are they alright now?
Good question. He was mostly lucid and coherent on our last phone call, but that was a few months ago. I never knew him that well, so it’s difficult for me to gauge. I’ll have to check in again.
You didn’t know him that well, but you let him stay with you for two weeks???
I’ve been thinking about this exact thing for the past few days.
The people I used to know are increasingly turning fascist. It’s like in some vampire or zombie movie: All of a sudden, there’s an unabashed nazi sitting with the group at the table. Next time, there’s already two. (It’s a rather big club, fortunately.)
But I fear the day when the group is going to look at me as if I’m the weird one, for not being a fascist.Or you can start calling out the fascists and get yelled at for not being sufficiently liberal.
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An awful wallful is when you reopen Facebook for the first time in a decade and find out that all of your old friends have become Trump supporters.
Neat, now realize that the same thing is happening to you; that 5yo kid you used to be is just as dead as if they got hit by a car.
I would argue that a past-tense love is evidence of a past-tense YOU.
As the Discordians say, “In five years, a complete stranger with your memories will inhabit your body. But don’t fret; another five years and they’ll be gone as well.”
impressive. very nice. let’s see your life.
Bone. Yeah.
In a past job, I ran children’s parties. One day one of the moms turned out being a girl I was friends with in middle school. Her kid was a treat, but the old friend’s personality was completely unrecognizable. The way she talked and moved, I could swear she was medicated. She had this calm to her that didn’t feel natural, even if she had been a stranger.
I tend to hope the best for others, so I’ve been under the assumption she must be on some kind of prescription that has sedative properties or side effects. Though I know that in high school (by which time we’d first parted ways), she got into some heavy drugs. I also know that by the time she had her third child, she’d become a full-blown anti-vaxxer, and her distrust of medicine was the reason we stopped talking to each other a second time (via Facebook, after connecting again long after high school.)
So really, I have no idea what’s going on. Hopefully she’s happy and healthy, but considering her updated anti-doctor stance I now feel doubts that whatever she was on was prescription. Either way, she’s nothing like the person I once knew. I hope her kids are okay.
While it might seem sad, it’s actually the exciting part of catching up.
it’s okay, mine doesn’t either (transgener)
Hi mom…
