Object Permanence

Okay I guess I'll leave up what I wrote yesterday for now but I don't want it to be the most recent post. I have to go in ten minutes to meet Satomi to go over grammar before our quiz. Right now I'm in one of those moods where I have an odd relationship with the idea of human connection. That didn't make any sense I know, but I'm not quite sure what I mean. It's my mood where I lose object permanence somehow and it's hard for me to believe that I'm connected to people when I'm not actively talking with them. So I sit here bathed in a feeling of isolation and loneliness, even though there's a web of people spread out around the world who care about and miss me. Somehow the very existence of the people I've collected throughout my life as friends makes more painful the fact that they're not here.

Andrew called me for the first time in a few months. He called while I was out having pizza with Adam and I had to tell him I couldn't talk. Weren't we going to stay friends? Have we? Could we? I cried over him for the first time since the spring a couple weeks ago. After all those years we daydreamed of when he'd be in college, he's there now and I don't know a thing about his new life.

I texted Liz on her birthday and she wrote back a one-sentence blurb of her life. Didn't we used to send each other novel-length emails every few days?

I exchanged a few short emails/facebook posts with Val. Why can't we go eat tendon and talk for four hours like we always did?

I caught Lucy on gchat for a minute when she was on her way to breakfast and I was on my way to bed. Katie texted me from Africa this morning to rant about cultural norms. They should be down the hall. We should order Cheng Hing and make hot chocolate and sit in Lucy's room and all rant about cultural norms together until Lucy gets too sleepy and kicks us out.

And after spending the weekend in Colorado, it's almost impossible to accept that I can't just reach out and squeeze Adam's hand when I want to. Which is always.

I would rather have this web of connections than not, but the world is so huge. I love the friends I'm making at school now, and in two years we'll graduate and they'll become more people to exchange occasional facebook messages with. And then what? Move to a new place, do it all again...

I'm sure there are relevant lyrics somewhere, but I'm about to be running late for grammar, so this is the best I'll do for now, courtesy of Ian Anderson:

Didn't I try to hold it down?
Freeze on the picture, hang sharp on the sound.
Catch the waking edge
another time.

Well, you know, I felt her in my dream last night…
now the sheets are cold beside me...