It’s very comforting for me to see the same person repeatedly. I’ll get attached to their face, their stance or stature, their mannerisms. I will get to observe from afar the shift in their facial expression and body language when they recognize a friend, or how they react to a mistake or a joke. It’s a strangely intimate way to learn about someone: observe them from afar.
When this person no longer frequents my sights, I feel a sense of loss. Was it a connection? Or are the emotions simply representing a loss of familiarity?
It’s such an honour to know strangers this way. To be comforted by someone you would say you know nothing about. What, then, does it mean to “know someone”? To know their name, their birthday or what city they grew up in? What if knowing how one flicks their when they are bored, crosses their legs or how fast they finish their coffee is what is means to truly know someone. In which case, humans just need to become unassuming stalkers to build connections.
Does love necessarily need proximity, conversation and similar hobbies? Or can love be more simple than that, can it just be about habit? Spend enough detached time with someone, and you’ll come to know so much about them and maintain a distance such that you have no rights to changing how they operate. You’d have to respect the annoying habits you observe them to have. You cannot change them in any way. So you get used to them. And thus, you love them in your own way.
How do you know you love them? When their not being there represents a loss from your life. Moments that you live serve as reminders that they aren’t living them right beside you. It’s the type of emotional loss that is described by people who feel guilty for feeling happy after experiencing the loss of a loved one. There is a cold and empty space where their once was something warm.
Loss terrifies me. I try exposure therapy regularly when it comes to loss, listening to people talking about their own grief, or to families coming to terms with a family members’ volatile or ill health. But my fears haven’t gone away s time has gone on. If anything, they’ve gotten stronger. Like I’m edging towards the doorway, and the door will open to reveal an irreversible double reality.
You know what I find so sad. That adults don’t vent all the time. When they are sad, they package their emotions for later. That the pressures of performance always weights down on them, and that young children simply don’t understand. More to come on this topic.
Agnostic: adjective to describe a trait of one not having a stance on a topic that has many competing beliefs.
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