Life: A Reverse Nightmare (Chapter Two)

Continuation of my experimental writing on life through an autobiographical approach. Hope you enjoy! Constructive criticism is highly welcomed!

Chapter Two:

            A relationship is a truly peculiar thing.  We often become friends with those we spend the most time around.  It’s like there’s something binding about invading another human being’s personal bubble.  The majority of the time that this happens, we enjoy the other person’s presence, but are there not times where we’re essentially coerced into a friendship or at the very least a civil acquaintance?  We all put up metaphorical social walls.  So what exactly signals us to let someone inside these walls?   Social expectations are part of the process.  As members of society, we’re at least expected to be polite in social situations and often that means making small talk with other members of society.  Imagine this as greeting and welcoming a new neighbor to the neighborhood with the walls we put up representing our house in the neighborhood. We’re (at least for the moment) in the neighborhood of others so it’s the polite thing to welcome them to said neighborhood.  However, friendship takes it further.  With friendship, you’re letting the person inside your house.  A boundary gets crossed and because of what? Is it personality? Maybe a social connection to someone else who you’ve let in your house that can vouch for them?  Regardless, there they are.  At first they might be a little timid, asking to go to the bathroom or if they can grab a beer from the fridge.  Then, some time passes and they grow comfortable with your house.  You’ll find them putting their feet up on the table and their arms behind their head, making themselves at home.  The transition from fear of the unknown to total comfort will go entirely unnoticed.  You won’t think to ask yourself perfectly valid questions like, “Did I do a background check on them?” and “Did I check them at the door for weapons?”  Even if you do, what difference would it make?  They’re already in your home and because of what? A social norm?  An unwritten rule that states as humans, we have to be social creatures?  The fact of the matter is that no matter who you let into that house of yours, something is going to get broken.  It may be something as small and insignificant as a vase or it might be something as substantial as your sense of security, a feeling that the naïve take for granted.  I may be rambling and you may not even be listening by this point, but if there’s one point I want you as the reader to get from this incoherent jumbled up mess of words, it’s this: The best of your friends will merely break the vase, but the most passionate of your lovers will take your sense of security.

            When that summer of bliss and young love ended, I was left with surprisingly a lot for a tale that foreshadowed woe as often as the last chapter did.  I was still in a relationship with the girl of my dreams, I had friends I thought would last a lifetime, and school was never much of a challenge for me.  However, making predictions about the future based on a snapshot from the timeline of your life is a dangerous thing.  The first couple months of school were an adjustment for me.  This was the first time in my life that I had had a serious girlfriend during the school year and she had a thing against public displays of affection that made it hard to stay as close as we were in the summer.  We were slipping apart in many ways those first couple months.  I won’t act like there weren’t warning signs because there were.  There were many.  The problem wasn’t that I didn’t recognize the signs.  It was that I didn’t know what to do about them.  So I chose to make the passive decision of ignoring them and waited for a better day to show up on the horizon.  Ever notice how when there’s s****y weather for a few days we just get used to it?  The first day or two we wake up and expect the weather to have turned around only to be disappointed when we walk outside or check the weather report to see that nothing’s changed.  Eventually, we expect it to remain miserable and at a certain point we almost come to terms with it and embrace it.  Day after day of these bleak days in my life, I just prepared myself for the next one.  I didn’t try to fix tomorrow, I just prepared myself for it.  Some people think that the worst thing that can happen in a relationship is when a couple fight, but there’s actually something much worse.  Fighting at least demonstrates that both parties in the relationship feel there’s something worth fighting for still.  What should worry someone in a relationship the most is when the fighting stops and the distance grows.  It’s when both parties accept defeat in a relationship that it is on an irreversible pathway to splitsville.  This does not necessarily mean the spark that once existed between the two will never return though.  In fact, in the weeks after the break up, if the couple truly loved each other, the spark will come back and it will come back rejuvenated and with a little more wisdom.  I believe that a lot of our future actions are dictated by emotions and feelings that we experienced in the past.  Once a couple experiences what it’s like without each other, they’ll use that feeling to fuel the relationship in its second stint.  Instead of breaking up when the union gets a little dull and burnt out, they’ll stick with it knowing from experience that the grass really isn’t greener on the other side.  This theory works just fine with two rational individuals, but what me and her were at that age was anything but rational.

~~~ Innocence is tragic in the sense that by the time you realize what it is, you’ve already lost it ~~~

            P.M. Tymes