On Letting Go...

I'm starting to learn a thing or two about letting go. For some of us, it's a task as difficult as moving mountains; for others, it's as easy as blinking an eye. I've known people who glide through this life completely unfettered, allowing all they encounter to slide through their hearts and minds as if they were coated in Teflon. I both envy and pity these people, equally. See, I'm the polar opposite of the non-stick nomads to whom I was just referring. I'm like one of those people on that show 'Hoarders' - you know, the people who never throw ANYTHING out, and become both literally and figuratively buried by their own possessions. Well, not exactly like them - see, I don't hoard material things. I mean sure, I still have a letter or two from a high school sweetheart, or a shoebox full of faded photographs, but c'mon - doesn't everybody? Things are not the issue. Things, I can get rid of. All it takes is one day of cleaning out the closet. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that my heart - where I keep things that are near and dear to me - is a closet of sorts. And upstairs from that closet, my mind and my memory function as an attic. Open the door to either one, and you will unleash an avalanche; Names, dates, places, conversations, songs, movies, regrets, heartbreaks and half a million singular moments will cascade over you, leaving you to dig yourself out like the rugby team from 'Alive.' I drag these things around like Jacob Marley's chains, hoping to feel again the way they used to make me feel. In the times when my mind is left to its own devices, and I drift away in idle thought, I exist in these bright, shining moments until they fizzle away like burned-out stars. I pity the heartless for never having experienced these things, and I envy them for not having to shoulder their weight once they've passed.

At some point during my youth, I bound my heart to my sleeve with barbed wire and duct tape. The whole that remained became a perpetually open door - a door that leads to a room to which there is no exit. If you affect my life in the tiniest, most seemingly insignificant way, and you're never getting out of that little room. Not you, of course, but my memory of you. It will exist in my mind like Bill Murray in 'Groundhog Day,' reliving that microscopic (universally speaking) moment when your life crossed paths with mine. Meanwhile, your memory of me will more than likely obey the laws of nature, and die its natural death at the designated time. Your name sparks the recognition of your face, and every word - verbatim - of whatever conversation we may have had in vivid, high-definition clarity. On the other hand, the mention of my name may cause you to squint your eyes, purse your lips, and slowly pronounce my name while you try and pinpoint exactly who the fuck I am. I'm not saying this to be self-deprecating... I'm just unveiling more of my psychosis. As I have pointed out on several different occasions, I'm fucking wired differently than most people. Seriously - who gets that attached to people? It's my blessing and my curse. My favorite band (The Gaslight Anthem) has a lyric that reads, "I'll love you forever if I ever love at all." If you ask me, that's the way to go. There are what, tens of billions of people sharing oxygen on this planet? On an average day, we encounter hundreds of people, from the people we have direct interaction with to the people with callously shoulder bump on our way to Starbucks. Hundreds. And that's still what? - 2% of the population? (My math is fucked, but you get the point.) Human connection is rarer than we realize. It's lightning in a bottle; catching a single raindrop. So why not savor each instance of it for as long as you possibly can?

Here's the thing: any given vessel can only hold so much matter before it spills over or bursts at the seams. At some point, you realize that clinging to tightly to the good times is causing you more harm than good. You realize that these moments - these organic, unique experiences - are fleeting. They cannot be relived. And each time you're reminded of this, it's like reopening a wound you thought had healed. At least, that's how it is for me. See, I'm getting older. Time seems to tick away faster and faster every year. My dad is getting older. I'm starting to forget the names of random dudes that used to wander into our room during Thursday night beer pong when I was in college. And what's been hardest to bear - what started me on this whole train of thought - is that I'm starting to see myself holding on to things that just aren't there anymore. It's never easy to face the fact that someone you care about has outgrown you, the way Christopher Robin outgrew Winnie the Pooh. But I keep setting myself up for that. I work with kids for a living... and kids grow up. As I type this, I've said goodbye to a handful of young people that have affected my life, probably without even knowing it. Sure, they may not have changed my views on politics (the gays can marry whoever they want) religion (God and I are on the same page, even if that page isn't necessarily in the bible) or even movies (M. Night Shyamalamamanann still sucks), but maybe they made a film that I could relate to, or took a picture that made my eyes widen in awe... or maybe they just made me laugh. The point is, I hold on to shit like that. I take it all to heart. And I know that I'm never going to see most of these kids again, and that bums me out. In the movie 'Glory Daze,' Ben Affleck's character says, "the bitch about getting older is that you don't fling yourself into love and friendships the way you did before you got hurt... and that's a damn shame." I love that quote. I've been kicking around the idea of having my next tattoo be a heart safety-pinned to my sleeve, in order to remind myself that it's okay to recklessly throw yourself out there with no safety net to catch you if things go south. But it's getting harder and harder for me to grin and bear the heartache of people drifting out of my life like ghosts.

So I'm learning a thing or two about letting go. I'm trying to appreciate people and moments for what they are. I'm trying to be grateful that I've been lucky enough to meet the people that I've gotten to meet (I was tempted to write names here, but I decided against it.) I'm trying to remind myself that even the brightest stars have to go dark eventually - so we might as well appreciate their beauty while they're still burning... and then let them go.