The Excruciating Pain Of The Temporary

It starts with the fleeting butterflies and moments of deep connection that jump out at you unexpectedly. The boy you so easily can see fitting into your future. The girl who blindsides you with confidence and a pretty smile. The friend whose initial conversation flows as though you’ve known each other for years.

The attraction is there. Romantically, physically, strictly platonically – it’s looking you dead straight in the eyes, asking you if you’re brave enough to stick with it for a while. The circumstances are less important than the energetic pull between you. And if you’re brave enough, you build on it.

As you’re stacking those building blocks into a house, you turn around one day and recognize how deeply this connection has hit you.

You’ll catch your breath through the constant smile you have on your face when you’re around them. Maybe you run away from it all out of fear of losing it. Or, perhaps you cling to it so tightly that you suffocate yourself and others in the process. Everyone manages love differently. But the end result is too often the same.

A sad reality is that whatever we cling to, we lose. Think about it.

You are the only person you’ve got with you for your entire life. Everyone else, everything else, they’re just coming and going. But not without purpose. If you’re aware of the little gifts each person leaves with you, it all starts to make sense.

You’re meant to catch and release over and over again.

The best friend you couldn’t see yourself living without – she may grow apart from you. The relationship that opened up a part of your soul you didn’t even know was there – he may choose to spend his life with someone else. A parent whose shoulder was always yours to cry on – you may get a phone call one day telling you differently. The latter is always the difficult part. Yet, it’s also the part that changes us into a better version of ourselves over time.

We don’t know how to see ourselves without those who fulfill us the most. However, we always seem to be okay when we make the decision to move on. Baby steps in a new direction can be excruciating compared to the plans you once thought were so secure. But through them we gain perspective. We are given the ability to look back on our lives with fond memories that stand out.

For many of us, our favorite people dictate the memories that have a tendency to come up over and over again. That’s not to say that time in our own company is worthless. But, given the chance, many of us would relish the chance to be back in those moments where our mutual love for another was so strong that any other problems seemed to simply fade away.

And that moment wouldn’t have happened without the baby step of bravery you took toward another.

Remember the strength of your heart and the unimaginable possibility you had to meet someone perfect for you in the most unusual of places.

The pain of the temporary seems to have one pattern, in that it is always only temporary.