On Losing People You Love To Love

On Losing People You Love To Love

11.19.23

I have never been very good with change. If I could dig my heels into the Earth and remain there forever, perhaps I would. But I have been forced to change because things around me are constantly changing, and if I don’t adapt - I will be left behind. There is good change, but I hate when I feel forced into it. Sometimes, it feels like I will be left behind no matter what I do. That it won’t matter how many shows I play, or how many friends I make, or how many jobs I have, or how many classes I take. None of it is permanent. I do not lose people frequently, but when I do, it seems like I lose them to things out of my control, and really, I don’t lose them at all. So why do I feel this way? I still love them - and they still love me. But it is different. It changes. Sometimes it’s college that takes them to different corners of the world - they stop answering texts, your name no longer enters rooms you are not in. You get demoted from “best friend” to “home friend.” But “home friend” is permanent. “Home friend” means that you are associated with home. But “home” is distant. “Home” is once every few months. They have a new home now. Your home stays the same - except you are the only one left in it.

Sometimes you lose them to other people - usually partners. They become caught in each other’s orbit the way only people in love can. You lose them in small ways at first, them smiling at their phone and needing their attention pulled away. Then, the partner is there - and the size of their love fills the room until there is no more space left for you. Then you aren’t in the room at all - and the only time you really get to see them is through your phone screen. In the event of a miracle, say you get them alone in the thick of the lovesickness, you can tell that they wish they were elsewhere. Through no fault of their own, it is unintentional and subconscious. But you want to spend time with your person, and your person wants to spend time with theirs. And I know this change is inevitable and it will probably get worse with age - as people get married and have children and home becomes a place behind a picket fence in a different state. I am happy to see it because the people I love deserve to be happy. But you wish their happiness still included you. This feeling of being left behind by your friends and their new lives, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is the equivalent of being the friend who must walk in the street because there is no more room on the sidewalk. It is tying your shoe and looking up to realize no one waited. My mom tells me that it’ll be my turn soon - that I’ll become that way. Life will be too busy to care about what I always have and I’ll fall maddeningly, sickeningly, embarrassingly in love and I’ll loosen my grip on everything and everyone that I held onto with white knuckles. I don’t know if that’s something I even want. I think I just want to sit at a very long table - with everyone I’ve ever loved and lost - and I want to have something to contribute to the conversation again. I want to be a person and not a memory.

That is not to say I am not so deeply grateful for the life I’ve built for myself in their absence. And that’s also not to say that they don’t come back.

Best,

Sincerely,

Bri

P.S. And of course, then there is losing someone you love to your own love. You love them in a way that is not the same way in which they love you. That’s a thought for another post.