I've been under the impression lately that the past 8 months or so have been a test of my endurance / patience / ambition / and general manliness. There's been highs and lows yes, but above all there's been a uncanny nonchalance about the way that I feel to everything. And I'm not sure if that's a great thing or not... I still laugh and try daily to make everyone around me feel better than they did before I arrived, but there's something almost routine about it now. I'm finding myself getting tired of the jokes I'm telling, like even they have lost their way during this troubling time, gone to some proverbial funnier place than I.
It's not to say that my emotions and feelings aren't firing, it's just that I don't feel things as passionately as I once did. Architecture remains, and will always, the one constant in my life (mortally speaking) and I do still get excited about that, but I'm finding that my relationships with people are becoming more and more stale, dull, and vanilla. There was a time in my life where I could count my friends on one hand, and I knew everything about them, from their favorite color to their greatest fears. And I truly considered them friends, and would trust them to the ends of the earth. But now, in this age of quantity and digital contest, I find that I know a lot of people, but not a lot about anyone. Work colleagues are not the same as friends. School buddies, once held in regard higher than all in my mind, have now become 3-times-a-week acquaintances. I suppose this is growing up, but it feels like more than that.
I'm not worried about a de-concentration of my friends, I'm worried that I don't care about them. A sad point in this past 8 months has been the leaving of a few of my close friends that I enjoyed hanging out with and going to movies and such with. We had a final lunch together at a nice restaurant and talked about the future and such. And at that table I thought to myself, as if I hadn't really realized it before, "I'm never going to see these people ever again." And in my mind I knew that that was sad, and that I should feel that about the situation. But I didn't feel anything. And that's the part that's worrying me. I sat there and ate and laughed and then when it came time to say goodbye, I said it. And that was that.
I don't know if I've watched too many movies to believe that every goodbye should be accompanied by stirring music and tears, but neither struck me that day, nor any of the following days. I'm becoming a rock, I suppose.
Because a rock feels no pain.
There were times when saying goodbye to someone was the end of days to me. I worried about it for weeks ahead of time and when it came time to say goodbye (to her), I'd be so nervous and scared that I'd make a fool out of myself. And I miss that. I miss being innocent and unbiased and pure. Emotion, be it bad or good, lets you know that you're doing something right in the world, you're moving ahead and living life, feeling everything as you go. I haven't felt anything for a while now, and I'm starting to wonder if I ever will again.
I miss you a lot.
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