Younger, she could boast about one thing – once she decided to keep you, she’ll never let you go. She never gave up on a friend, even if there was distance, because she wasn’t one to lose people. (Perhaps, that was why death was one of the concepts she found really hard to process.)
But older, one of the parts of her she had to trade away was her naivety. She learned that there were people who went away, who took different paths and worse, that she wasn’t that good at keeping correspondence because time and distance had the power to make her forget and feel awkward.
The lesson was: She had to work hard to keep people because people didn’t and couldn’t always stay.
But learning this lesson also birthed a new fear – the fear of getting too attached. She’s already too familiar with forming deep connections with the souls of the people she let in. But, as life had been slowly teaching her, all these people eventually became just parts of moments she once lived and not constants with whom she shares her new secrets to (and sometimes, it was her fault for not reaching out as often as she used to).
Accepting the possibility that people could leave meant she had to worry about investing her heart in every new person she lets in. It meant dreading the goodbye. It meant trying to promise in a future with a person while trying to push down some sort of bitter taste down her throat. It meant learning that she mustn’t be as capable as she thought in being a friend who keeps and a friend worth keeping.
(How and why is it even possible that good people would be sent in your life only for you part ways?)
She hopes, one day, that this fear turns into an inspiration instead, that the fleeting nature of people make them more precious. For now, she’ll try to live in moments, work on keeping people and remind herself to live life boldly, without any regrets.
pollenpiggy 