Speaking of Human Elements

I have been thinking lately about people and connections and how we take a piece of everyone we know with us always. Even people I don't know anymore are with me every day -- whether they introduced me to a favorite song, or a new musician, a way of thinking, a phrase, a saying or mannerism -- I am always collecting parts of people.

It is the parts of people that I have loved the most that are the most easily identifiable. Maybe the longer you spend with a person, the more of them you carry with you? And what if the longer the length of time between when you last left each other, the more the parts of them you've collected become a part of you -- indistinguishable -- unattributed to their original source?

The sad part is that I miss all of the people I carry with me. I miss them all in varying degrees. From my fifth grade teacher to the boyfriend that I never kissed, to the kid I tutored after school, to the coworker who encouraged me not to cry during the first week of work when I was accosted by a creepy homeless man, and the first boy that I loved. I am always missing people. It's not the kind of missing that ruins my days. It's the sweet ache of absence and I feel it for all of my family and current friends who are spread all over the world -- and for the people I have lost along the way.

I have been listening to a song on repeat that made me think of all this: Skeleton on Display by Now It's Overhead. Of course, this song is about some love affair or another, but it touches me:

"Stepping out of skin we grew together in this life we're ending."

Don't we all grow skin together in our various relationships? We forge commonality, create bonds, sometimes we create our own language...

"I will always miss you
I will always miss you
I will always."

And the chorus makes me long for my grandfather, my best friend from freshman year of college and past loves all at once.

"I am a skeleton on display."

I suppose this is true about myself. I am the old heart on my sleeve cliche. I make myself vulnerable by allowing myself to miss people in the way that I do...but I think it's worth it