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Bugsteak

This isn't mine, but it made a lot of sense to me. I got this from a friend who got it from another forum.

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All I can say is it does get easier. I've been there, only I was lucky enough to witness a girl I loved meet a violent end that was essentially brought on by her father, but left me with plenty of room to blame myself, too. I'm not going into it on a public board, but I know what you're dealing with. Writing helped me. Same with music. Some sort of creative outlet to get it out. If you don't find a way to vent, you'll explode. Do whatever you have to if it'll help you get past everything. I moved away and told no one about it, lost contact with all those who knew. I really couldn't stand the awkward consolations, or abruptly halting conversations when I came walking up, or everyone treating me so delicately that it was clear they expected me to fall apart at any minute. So, gently caress it, what better time to move on?

I'm not saying that's a good idea, necessarily. You're more likely to bottle things up for longer that way. I walled myself off pretty well, and I'm still accused of being aloof at times, despite the fact that I'm a very amicable and social person; I just don't let many people too close. That's bad, and I'm aware of that. It's hard to form connections when you have my history; on top of my incident, I lost five other friends in a period of a year and a half. It just seemed like everyone I got close to was guaranteed to abruptly die. When you get overly acquainted with mortality, it seems like a good defense to make sure you have a minimum of deep person connections so you won't have to deal with the loss again. Obviously, this is a terrible idea.

For a good while, I lived a coward's life. I would rarely reach out. People came to me naturally-- I'm a people person-- but I did not seek them out. Even now, when people try to get to know me better, they frequently find me ambivalent and chalk it up to my easy-going nature. But it's not simple apathy; it's a basic fear of personal connections. I've never been afraid of death. Cancer could be creeping through me right now, metastaticizing to all of my organs, a silent assassin ready to shut my ramblings up for good within a week. I couldn't care less. I've never been afraid of death. But I'm deathly afraid of grief.

The amount of love you pour into something is directly proportional to the amount of pain you will suffer when it's gone. This isn't a new concept, nor is it a particularly clever one. It's simple fact, even if it reads like something from the pessimist's bible. Almost everything we love is ephemeral, transient. Everything you love is dying as we speak; every glimpse of beauty you manage to find will fade. These are the cold facts that poison us.

But that's not to say that walling yourself off is a suitable means of coping. It's not. Even the barest of cynics among us should understand this, because there's not a cynic alive who didn't start off as an idealist; cynicism follows naturally from wrecked dreams. It takes a blow sufficient to shake one's worldview to produce a cynic. Even those who fool themselves into thinking this sort of armor is a logical progression are lying to themselves, and it's a simple matter to demonstrate why.

How many sterling moments of triumph do you have in your life? Those moments that will stay with you forever? Absolutely indelible, glorious memories that have imprinted themselves so deeply upon your cortex that you never have to worry about them becoming warped or faded? Most of us can't claim many. But how many deep, personal connections have you formed? How many people do you love? Because each strong connection, when broken-- and trust me on this, because I have plenty of experience-- represents a day you will always remember. Every severed love will pang for years to come. Even if you can claim truthfully that you had countless great moments together, unless you've found something really special, it won't compare to the moment of loss. On the whole, those great moments may seem like a lot, even without one of those perfect days that you will always remember in perfect detail mixed in. But that sudden loss is equal to the flipside of all those great moments, only this one is condensed into one moment. One day. And you will never forget it, no matter how hard you try. You will always remember where you were and what you were doing and what you felt when that bond is severed.

And that was the source of my cowardice. I carry around a collection of terrible moments that are not counterbalanced by those perfect memories we all hope for. I just have the ragged wounds left from severed ties. I relive the worst times-- hearing the news, or attending the funerals, or watching them die-- over and over in my head.

But that's the joke. If you shut yourself down and don't allow yourself to feel, to form those connections, you'll never have a chance of matching those terrible days with the perfect ones.

Just sit and think about it for a moment. Seriously think about it. Everyone you love will eventually be dead. Chances are, you'll have to live through at least a few of those losses. And caring that much guarantees that the day of those losses will be among the memories you will never forget. Your lover? Your best friends? Your parents? Everyone has an expiration date. One of life's small mercies is that most parents at least outlive their children. But for the most part, everything you allow yourself to love is something you will lose.

So here's what I suggest, and here's what I'm trying to do. Don't shut yourself down. Love without fear. Because if you decide you're going to protect yourself by not caring, you'll have no one you care about with whom to make those perfects days. You'll be guaranteed at least one blank and pitiless day that you will never be able to shake, but you'll have a shot at making something to balance it out. The fact that it's all dying is just one more reason to do what we can now. When you're breathing your last in two, four, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more years, you should be able to look back at everything and say, "Hey, at least I gave it what I could. Sometimes I was afraid, but I did it anyway." So get out there and try. I mean really try. Give yourself something to look back on, so you have something more to remember than the scars you've been left with.

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So, thoughts?