carrying capacity

the people we love

I wrote this piece while recently in Colorado, but have just finished it now. It felt worthy of sending even if it’s jumping backward in time. Time is a constant scribbling anyway. Enjoy.

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Earlier today, I found myself feeling wounded—wounded that all things change, most notably our relationships to people—people whom we love. It should come as no surprise that putting the length of the U.S. between myself and the people back home might place strain on our relationships, but it still feels surprising when it happens, especially with certain someone’s I was once so so close with. It surprises me because some of my relationships from home have since deepened, our closeness swelling even as our physical distance grew. Some relationships I place less expectation on, we catch up when we do, the time we get is the time we get if we get it at all. And some relationships I struggle to accept have changed.

The wound split when someone I love didn’t make as much time for me on this trip as I had hoped. Considering how close we once were and how rarely we get to see each other, I thought there would at least be space for the bare minimum of time together. In the early years of my move, making time for one another was no issue, we were thrilled to be in each other’s company. In more recent years our time spent together has dwindled. They are often busy with work and maintaining life and I think I’m still late catching up to the new dynamic and the rightful expectations. My first reaction has been to make it all about me. To pout. To trace my anger and enforce it, like a child making a snow angel. In the heat of my feelings, I drafted a strong worded text—I targeted the blame, I beared my teeth. But then I set it aside. I took some breaths, I cried about it on the phone with my boyfriend, and then I walked the labyrinth of my heart which always leads me to the core of the matter—it is never all about me.

What’s the point in being perpetually angry at someone whom I love? Whose life branched differently from mine? Whose finances and child and work schedule and priorities and perhaps even values are not my own? Who does my anger serve when it is at someone whom I love whose carrying capacity is different than mine? I’ve decided no one, least of all me. Not that my anger isn’t free to arise, it is. I let it pulse. And then, if I choose, I can simply let it go.

With this in mind and with the time that has passed, I do not send the strong worded text. I delete it. Everything changed as I felt my feelings instead of trying to fix, avoid, or offload them. Instead I decide that I will thank this human I love so dearly for the time they were able to make for me. I will let them know that in the future I would like more quality time be carved out for me, if that is something they also want. And that they can tell me anything and still reach out anytime. That I am still here—not always so present in the flesh, but in memory, in heart, in spirit. I want them to know that I love them. That I am rooting for their nourishment, fulfillment and supportive network. I do not have to choose the fragility of my precious ego, I can remain a node along the circuitry, even if I am dim and in the distance. For no one did anything wrong here but change. No one is abusive and ill intentioned. It is none other than life plucking and pulling us as it may and do, and we are but strings. A string under god’s strumming finger.

After not sending the text, the most surprising thing happened. I receive a message from the person I love that they have taken off the day and have ample time to catch up now. Wow, I think to myself, I’m so glad I didn’t send that strong worded text. The one where I would’ve likely caused unnecessary friction. The one that was righteous and hurting and demanding. I’m glad I took the time to explore the whole feeling from beginning to end before responding; the one that began in anger and ended in gratitude—ultimately, in getting what I had wanted all along. Was it my change of heart that changed the whole situation? Was it my patience? Who is to say?

All I know is that closeness cannot be demanded. Closeness is like a wild animal. Like the young, small, orange feral cat, Bittens my parents named him, who comes by for food here and there. Sometimes weeks go between his appearing causing them stress. They wish he’d come inside, or sleep in the $100 dollar kitty tent my dad bought him, but he doesn’t. He appears of his own cadence, he eats and leaves. Are we not all still wild somewhere deep inside? Aren’t some of us more feral and some more domesticated—yet all hungry and deserving of nourishment? Who’s terms are we on?—I think the answer, if you could call it that, is one another’s and also no one’s.

How many of our sufferings come from wanting something from people that they cannot currently give? Painful feelings around such things are inevitable, but insistent torturing on top of it need not be. We each have different carrying capacities, higher and lower, wider and narrower, and one is not necessarily better than the other but simply the way things go. Of course they can change, our loads and what we are able to bear. And in the meantime, instead of being angry that I want someone’s load to match mine, I will practice respecting that it isn’t. I will find where to thank them instead.