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PROXIMITY



The reality in life is that people are almost always too close or too far away. 

Proximity invites conflict. Distance invites loneliness.

Distance is yearning. With distance I can be selfish, I can own myself so completely there is no other reality than the one that exists in my head. It can be perfect and I can revel in the pain of the idealist, holding onto what comes next, of what could be. It also means that I guard myself against the world. It means experiencing highs and lows, strength and weakness, in sometimes feeling each moment so strongly I can lose common sense, my misery can be so sharp I forget to notice where it falls into joy, where I am the mood, where I'm passing through agony and bliss so rapidly I forget the movement exists at all. I also will make mistakes. Many of them, many many of them.

The point is to get close to people because ultimately the best moments and worst moments in my life involved other people. It becomes clear that I can’t do this without invading someone else’s space. I can’t do it flawlessly because they have built up their own routines for how life can be safe, how distance can feel as secure as a warm blanket. I’ll get in their way. They will get in mine. "Life is messy...so let's just jump in and make Mud pies."(Mudpie theory) I will attempt to please them. With time this runs out and I become simply awkwardly myself. Because there really is no other choice after awhile. And sometimes I won’t be fun. Sometimes I won’t be interesting. All I need to do is not pull away so far that I can’t come back.
Sometimes I don’t want to be held. Sometimes I need it like a child does. And being that close can hurt. I feel the wounds I’ve avoided by living shallow. By letting my life be dictated by trivial things, by defining my moments purely by following my interests and obsessions, imagining my humanity simply as a laugh track and Facebook status to be shared with the world.

Closeness means that everything seems to have meaning attached to it. Every second has weight. When I am in their orbit. Then the meaning falls away and is replaced like a gust of wind with some other mood. But I fail to realize that sometimes this weather has nothing to do with me.

When people are far away they can be perfect and so can I. This is why unrequited love hurts so badly as a child and why we mythologize reunions. So, we get wrapped up in small issues. We get stuck in our own head. We go into crisis and emerge from it with no memory.

Then there are those moments when I am just close enough to people, when they sneak further inside me than I thought they could have come as a result of constant company. I can feel the pressure of being seen, of noticing my own racing heartbeat, my own speeding thoughts, I can’t be numb to this, no matter how much I pretend, it hurts to be this close because every cell in my body is alive. I guess we have to risk people getting too close to have them get close enough. Or to put it yet another way, how close one is to life dictates how quickly it passes, how fully one remembers it, how much meaning people have for them. With distance time barely exists, memories are flimsy when not granted weight by pain and hope. Allowing someone close to me one means I can experience time and change...and ultimately growth. Just sayin'.

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