Unconscious Uncoupling

We just kind of stopped talking.

Nothing really happened either, there was no one event, no explosion, no clashing of egos, no sudden exhibition of energy; just a gradual hemorrhaging into nothingness.

You know how sometimes you’re in your car, on your way to some meeting or whatever, and while sitting in traffic you kinda glance down at your dash—because I mean when else would you ever look down there unless you’re about to be pulled over or something—and you panic, suddenly realizing you’re out of gas? Realizing I was losing touch is that feeling, but with less panic and more surprise.

Though that’s not quite it either; it’s also that feeling you get while reading Joan Didion or listening to Lana Del Rey—like time is being stretched and pulled like suspended syrup in the air—like cigarette smoke that settles in an under-circulated part of a room. It’s that haunting quality when listening to Lady Day sing “Easy Living” while knowing there was nothing about her life that could be considered “easy” by any measure.

No one expects relationships to last forever; people change their thoughts, opinions, and attitudes many times over a lifetime. For me though, there’s something unsettling in the idea that relationships are subject to atrophy too. Everything else being equal, this signifies time itself is working against us from feeling connected with each other, aside from all the crap we do to ourselves to curtail connections prematurely.

But maybe that explains why the relationships we do maintain can feel so much larger than life—we have to wrestle with life itself to make them work and fight to keep those connections alive.

Let’s talk again soon.