And never knew.

Fear is a uniquely amazing thing.  Some of us are motivated by fear while others are completely immobilized by it.  I’ve always been the type to be motivated by it, but lately I’ve noticed a more “frozen” version of myself. Is fear immobilizing me?  I’m always curious about what motivates people to do certain things, and over the past few weeks I have thought about it more and more. 

What fueled my curiosity was a limbo-ed friendship; something not quite just friendship, but also nowhere near a relationship. In his grandiose gestures & ideals of a potential “us” I would just sit silently contemplating if connection could possibly come that easily.  And in my naïve attempt to protect him, I thought it best not to encourage him. I stayed silent; all the while knowing I may lose him while trying to figure it all out.  But you have to be fair and you have to be honest, and I made that decision this year for a multitude of reasons. Wasn’t that the brave thing to do?  Honesty takes courage while hiding oneself is a product of fear in its purest form.  

This is not to say that I was perfect by any means; silence can hurt, and sometimes the combination of silence and sarcasm just rubs people the wrong way.  That is my best guess for what came next. To my shock and confusion, one day he decided to fall off the face of planet Anj. You realize that as quickly as someone is to tell you how you are so special, you are also extremely disposable.  Something to be remembered is that the potential good still has to outweigh the current bad.  There wasn’t a build up of trust, even in our pseudo-friendship, and so I was disposable. And I was disposed of. 

When this happened I replayed several situations over in my head, just trying to piece it all together and hoping it would lead me to discover what his breaking point was.  And maybe I’m looking at this too simplistically.   My challenge has always been to exist in the gray, when I am definitely an extreme black & white type of person.  The friendship may not have been ideal, especially for him, but I figured it was better than nothing. 

I over-analyzed this idea to death and I eventually came to this: Is it possible for another person to only care about you in one capacity? This was especially difficult for me. I realized that he didn’t want my friendship; he just wanted me to dissipate.  Maybe some people don’t ever intend to be your friend. I don’t know if that means they care more or care less. When I finally realized this, and trust me it took countless amounts of unreturned messages for me to realize this; I finally left him alone.

Even after we stopped talking I still wondered why people claim the gift of great connection, yet are quick to give up on it. Is it fear or lackluster?  I’ve never found connection particularly difficult, but I realize that connection is more difficult for some than others.  I may have never understood his connection to me, and I’m guessing that is why it was so easily removed.

Sometimes our fear of connection can have the same outcome as just a lukewarm connection. You can be too scared to face the vulnerability and just put on your running shoes on and jet.  But why?  I associate different feelings with different actions, so it confuses me that people run from too much closeness as well as too little.   Me? I’ve never been the running type.  So when my “friend” finally chose to talk to me it had been months of silence.  He broke the silence finally and guess his preferred form of contact? An emoji! Yup modern guys are the most elusive yet. 

His “yelling” texts smelled like straight up Jack to me, and when he finally called me a few minutes later this was confirmed.  After pouring out his “feelings” and stomping on any character this girl might still have had, to my second shock he reverted back.  I guess I’ll put him in the big red question box because I still have no idea what happened. 

As one of my fave’s said:

           This is the most fun part. I believe it’s really hard to meet someone you have that much of a deep connection with, so you should cherish it.  If the person doesn’t like them back, oof. I’m sorry. That’s a hard situation and it’s not always easy just to move on. When you meet someone you really like and connect with, I think that’s very special, and not to be taken for granted. They discuss this in Before Sunset, one of my favorite films, in a way that really struck a chord with me. Julie Delpy’s character says when she was younger, she thought she’d meet many people of the opposite sex that she would have a special, deep, personal connection with, but as she got older, she realized that’s not the case, and you realize how rare those kind of connections really are. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found I agree with this sentiment.

Fear sets into all of us, and I can’t pinpoint that for him it was indeed fear, but for me?  Yeah it’s a unique form of fear.  The mixture of fear, caution, confusion, and distance is way grayer than I’m comfortable with.  Maybe connection is more difficult than I previously thought; definitely something to work towards.