People. There are all kinds of them in this world.
There are some who are your friends, perhaps. Although sometimes not. You can’t quite place them in a category you wish to. There are times when you question the category your heart seems to file them in. You know, when they fail to see your loneliness. Not the one which is visible - they would of course see that. After all, they are good friends. But, they can’t seem to sense the unsaid. And in that ignorance, they end up saying things - innocuous things - that hurt you. You gulp them in. You try to say to yourself - they are not to blame, you are being too interpretative. After all, they are your friends - the only cool people you have to place that tag upon. Yet, when they leave you alone, you sit at the back, with a smile on your face, enjoying the show. Without them.
There are some who you do not consider ‘friends’. Mere acquaintances, nice people though. These are people who sit with you at the back. When your cool friends are reveling in ignorance. And you strike a chord with these people. They seem to be frustrated themselves, tired may be a better word. You are too. You stretch your legs and say to them, with a brave learned face - ‘people are different, you do you’. They smile - I am not sure whether that smile shows agreement or if it hides pain. The same pain you hide when you say those wise words. These are people you can fall back upon - pure, innocent souls. Yet, you cannot be like or with them always. Other things come in, you have other journeys they cannot accompany you on. But at the stops along the way, when you are tired, you sit with them. Legs stretched. You talk, and move on. They too continue on their own journeys.
There are people in the middle then. People you call ‘friends’, yet you (or they) maintain a distance which does not seem to get bridged. These people understand you, but not fully. You can talk to them about the first category of people and share your woes - they will nod their heads and give you an anchor you need; but, they cannot somehow fill the void left by those other people. In moments of doubt, you feel nice with these people - a different kind of nice as compared to the nice people above. You see these people as potential travelers on your journey. However, they have different struggles, other priorities, varying challenges. Sometimes, you wish to help them navigate those but they won’t open up. Or, you simply cannot help. Hence, you are left in a limbo. You are neither acquaintances nor partners. Just somewhere there.
And then there are people you simply cannot understand. They have drastically different world-views, diametrically opposite values. You see them as aliens, as versions of human beings you can never imagine yourself as. It’s almost funny sometimes to watch these people, doing their thing. And mind you, these people are in abundance, more in quantity and intensity than the first three described above. Moreover, when the first or the third category of people interact with these guys, you experience huge doubt. Aren’t these guys supposed to be in my camp, sharing my world-views? You wonder then, maybe you’ve got it all wrong. Maybe, you are just alone and all these guys are people you will never be able to form a permanent bond with. Temporary sojourns of course, serving different purposes on the way but not lifelong partners. Or maybe, it is you who’s the problem. But, this latter thought scarcely if ever occurs to me. I am who I am. The fact that there aren’t others who I can find doesn’t mean I am the problem.
There are folks then whose shadows you once inhabited. But now, your contexts have changed. They love you, unconditionally. You do that too (hopefully). This love also keeps you stable, anchored. When all categories of people seem like a burden, you knows these guys are there - for you. But in the daily journey of the highway, these people are of little help. They cannot understand your struggles, your challenges as those other people who share your context do.
Then there are people who inhabit your thoughts and prayers - people whom you genuinely love. These people, however, due to the lottery of birth will never cohabit your spaces forever. They will stay and go, leaving pain and memory behind. They have drastically different journeys to chart. As much as you would like to keep them with you forever, you have to let go. Respect their agency and their lives.
And finally, there is this person who thinks too much. This person who writes random stuff. This person who loves things no one on the planet seems to love. This person who manages to find a ‘yet’ in every other category of person. This person who wishes to live fully, yet gets scared. This person who is unsure if he wants ‘someone special’. This person who smiles in photos but does not know if that is real. This person who sometimes wants to know how others perceive him as - if he could just get a glimpse into their visceral, raw emotions about him. This person who says that he doesn’t care but this person who is human after all. This person who is YOU.
that was DEEP
its so meaningful