Confetti in My Hair: Why We Fight Our Own Joy
The Hippocampus Archives: Are You Projecting a Movie That Isn't Real?
I was not planning on writing this, but after the day I had, I thought why not. There is something that came up from the depths of the sediment…You know—the suppressed s*hit some of us feel is not necessary to dig into. I mean, come on—I do this for work. I already know what is down there, what it means, yada yada... Then I realized in that moment how much I minimize my own aches. How the loss of a friend having to grieve impermanence in a way that my mind just could not grasp. Object permanence. What do you mean she was here and now she is gone… Just like that—gone. I was in denial… calling her, texting her. Then…
Just stuck…
A week prior to this incident—I could feel something. Remember the cricket I mentioned in a previous article? Yeah... I could feel the essence of that cricket. I could feel something was off in the field, like something was about to happen, but I just did not know what. I was in my people-pleaser era at the time, to some degree. Now, don’t get it twisted—I still had no problem telling random people no or speaking up for myself. But with the people I loved and cared for? I was not pushy. I didn’t want to crowd her or make her feel hover-policed, so I gave her some space. We normally talked at least once a week, and even though I could feel her drifting, I stayed quiet. Around that time, she had already moved away to the East Bay and like all humans, she adapted to her environment. It’s just a part of development, but her new environment was loud. The teens there partied in ways that my sheltered nervous system was coded to recognize as pure danger.
So, my BFF and I were shifting. She was in a place where she desperately needed to belong to her new surroundings, and I didn’t live there—I would just travel in to visit. We were being pulled in different directions by the classic adolescent trap: the fight between staying true to yourself and the desperate need to fit in.
Can you remember what you did to belong during that time?
