I don’t think I’ll respond well to my first serious earthquake. Of course I won’t. But it will hit me on a variety of levels because I take great comfort in thinking that things are unyielding. I like things that I can touch– things right before my eyes, and I like to be able to count on the fact that they are going to stay put.
The first time I feel the earth truly move and things begin to fall, it’s going to alter my sense of reality completely. Even though I can anticipate that in advance, it’s still going to happen. I can’t seem to help but rely on the solid.
I feel the same way about human beings. I like to believe that they’re not going to simply disappear on me. I suppose that’s because I can’t imagine disappearing on someone else. At least not without fair warning.
But people have definitely gone poof in my life, like that last flash of light you used to see when you’d turn off an old-style television set. My last boyfriend died so unexpectedly that I really don’t think I’ve properly processed it. One minute he was there, and the next he was gone. My life changed forever, in the space of that minute. That does not do good things to one’s sense of security and stability. Life is as fragile as a soap bubble. Pop.
And one of the things I hate most about changing jobs is saying good-bye to old work friends, friends who have been in the career foxhole with me, people that I think I’ve bonded with. Many of them say they’ll keep in touch, but it’s been my experience that the vast majority of them do not.
But by far the worst (yes, even worse than death, because death is inevitable and usually not intentional), is when people disappear for no known reason. My best friend in junior high school was in foster care, and one day, after many years, right in the middle of the school year, she was no longer there, and nobody could or would tell me what had happened. And I’ve had many friends in the virtual world of Second Life who have abruptly disappeared without saying good-bye. It feels like a death, and for all I know it could be, so it’s extremely upsetting.
My best friend for 14 years broke all ties with me based on a misunderstood sentence fragment as far as I can tell. It still causes me a great deal of pain. More horrible than the fact that I miss his presence in my life is that I’m now having to reconcile my sense of reality with the actual truth that our friendship must have been much more frail than I realized. That makes me wonder what that says about me and how I perceive the world.
Things fall apart. The center does not hold. I don’t like that. Not even a little bit.
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