Dissed Interest

It's a strange but true fact that I have amazing friends and family so absolutely wonderful that the very knowledge of their love is the measure by which I maintain a standard of gratitude in my life that rules its every aspect ... and that a number of those I have the closest, deepest, and longest relationships with are not much interested in me.

There's no way to write a lead like that without looking dreadfully sad-sack about it, but for me these days it's more an intriguing point of conversation than much of a booey-hooey piece of dramatics. I am VERY much loved. My friends and family are of the deepest value for me. And I am for them, I actually know that.

But ... I don't interest several of 'em.

There are those who just don't understand my life - the way I went off and didn't stay married and have chillun's. The way I wrote some sort of horrendously long book about a kind of oddly obscure subject (how'd she come up with that anyway?). The way I live alone (who does that anyway?). The way I am a secretary. Pick your aspect, I have a lot of odd ones. And many I don't think all that strange which can still be alienating.

It wasn't a plan to Be All Nonconformist and set myself apart from people. There are a LOT of people who gravitate to the odd stuff I'm into. Eleven of 'em "follow" me right here, and I know they're not the only ones reading (hi, X). But there are people who can't relate to me. Or who don't keep up with me. Who, just for whatever reason, have missed out on a lot of me - because I'm not static, and I keep growing - but not because they don't care. The likelihood is - they don't know there's anything to miss.

Time moves FAST, it's wily stuff. And lots of it goes by between one compelling reason to email, or call, and the next. And Diane gets out of the habit of calling A or B or C or whomever, because who wants to be the constant pestering pain in the behind? And holy smokes, where did a YEAR go!?

It's not like I don't do this myself. I was thinking of beautiful K and her dear husband T just today, realizing I have not reached out to them.

People require connection to cultivate connection, and it's amazing how easy - especially once you reach a certain age - it is for a short gap to widen, and to turn into a pretty big one. Kids to raise, illnesses to manage, jobs to worry about and be stressed by.

I wonder how *many* of us look at the people we are supposed to be close to, and see blank incomprehension, when we get a glimpse of a face at all? I know it's not just me. But all I can feel is me. And I know I have a lot of love - but almost never actual attention. It is such an unusual occurrence for my phone to ring it confuses me to see my message light on (until I pick up the message - always just the one, when there is one at all - and learn that it's the drugstore calling, or my dentist). It's not rare for the sound of my phone ringing to actually cause me to jump out of my skin. I actually get startled when someone thinks to contact me.

And then there's conversation, and it's over, and I hang up ... and my weird brain gets all swirly on people. I'm such an interesting person, but those who respond to that aren't necessarily the people one might "expect" to be most engaged by me. Which itself is so interesting to me. And then I think about the way we lapse with each other, and I forgive us all. And then I think about talking to my niece this weekend (perhaps the most intensely *interesting* person in my life, from my perspective!), and talking with my brother, and I remeber the last time I talked to one person I adore, and how fun that was, and then I remember the time I spent over an hour laughing my stomach sore with someone else, looking at unbelievably ugly shoes online, and then I remember the way my ex always calls to say happy birthday, and something makes me think of my dad, and I go off into the fugue state this sentence has become, and life's blessings go all messy and run across my brain, and suddenly a molecule shifts in the universe, and I am a cat or a dog, and just transfixed by the experience of a moment.

Then the phone rings, and I have to go check caller ID.

Or I just hit send/receive and get no email. One of those things. Maybe. And the day goes back on.