passion

What is it about life that keeps me so god damn interested? Just when I think I’ve figured everything, that I’ve got it all understood and see things real clearly, somethin’ happens that changes everything. Someone walks into my life, changes it forever, and then walks away just as suddenly as they appeared.
I guess we can’t always have things our way, as far as that goes, which doesn’t seem like such a great demand entirely, but it is too great a demand. I’m talking about the people in our lives. The people in the world whose paths cross mine at just one point—one small point in time—where that point is actually a longer period of time if I look at it real closely. However close I look, it never seems like enough time. It’s crazy really. The brevity of a relation can concentrate the impact of that relation on my life. Sometimes someone’s entire purpose is to change me and my direction, then leave. It’s not for us to be lovers or friends or even neighbors. It’s for us to change each other forever.
Then be gone. That’s all. Bang. Bye.
And I know in my heart that I won’t see that person again ever. Not next year nor at holiday time nor ever again. I only know that I may think about it, but actually I will never see that person again. The impact they had on my life and their departure is a silent story that’ll keep me company all the way to my grave, and that memory might always touch my heart, silence me, and call me to a moment’s reflection.
I’m left wondering what exactly to do without that person, like a great heavy feeling in my heart, but at the same time I feel that weight in my heart is like an anchor that’s keepin’ me from driftin’ into troubled waters. That heavy heart is an anchor to this world and its people, my family, my friends. There may be an unspoken, mutual sense of inevitability for our brilliant demise, or we may or may not go having said our peace, but that individual and I will benefit from our separation. I can’t really figure how else to explain it. I just know how it feels.
I know there are ways of finding purpose and meaning in this life that amaze me. I can see life like a great big beautiful tree. A tree that needs my care and tending. A tree that I think needs me desperately, but actually, that tree has rotted roots and is dead or dieing on the inside. Maybe it’s even hollow, and a complete stranger can break into my life and knock that tree down and expose the fallacy of my existence. I wasn’t really making much sense doin’ what I was doin’, but what I was really meant to do or who I really am was lying like a seedling beneath that rotted tree, waiting for a chance at sunlight. Waiting for me.
It sometimes takes a complete stranger and a brief yet intense period of time together for me to find myself, see myself, save myself, or know myself truly. Maybe I learn what I am or what I am not, what I do or don’t want, but I will feel eternally grateful to a painful memory. I am grateful to the painful memory. Forevermore.