worlds colliding - on attachment, & entanglement

whenever i meet someone new and feel as though i've formed a genuine connection with that person, it feels like worlds colliding: our different trajectories become entangled for one brief moment in time. less than a millisecond in the grand scheme of things -- so utterly brief that the universe barely recognizes its occurrence.

sometimes, thinking about the vastness of the universe and how it simply does not care about you makes people feel angry, or scared, or hopelessly inconsequential. but i don't mind much what the universe thinks of our interaction -- i care only about what you and i think of it.

to that end, i've got this "bad" habit of giving too much of myself to people i care about, even if i've just met you and you're almost a total stranger. recently, i was traveling and sat next to someone random on a flight. after around 10-15 minutes of debating back and forth with myself about whether or not i should strike up a conversation (he was wearing headphones and looked rather engrossed in something on his phone), i decided, “headphones are the universal sign of not wanting to talk... i should just leave him alone.”

just kidding -- i decided, “to hell with social norms!”

all of the airplane conversations i had started up to this point had been fascinating, and i’d learned so many incredible life lessons. on one flight, a university professor offered to buy a children's book from my environmental organization. on another, i spent hours talking to the owner of a matcha company about his philosophy on life.

in that latter conversation, the matcha company cofounder asked me, "why do you start conversations like this?" and i told him all about my fascination with life stories – but even more specifically, i said, "i've never regretted starting a conversation, only not starting one."

with that conversation still fresh in my memory, and resolving to avoid cognitive dissonance by making my actions align with my beliefs and prior statements, i figured something along the lines of, "if he doesn't want to talk then he can always just put his headphones back in."

and thus began, i kid you not, a conversation that lasted over four hours.

this is how the script often plays out. i meet someone new. we talk for a while -- not small talk, but conversation that carries depth and meaning. by the end of it, i know your life story, your regrets, your fears, your hopes, and get a fairly good sense of who you are as a person. i know what you're proudest of in life thus far, where you see yourself in the next five years, who you admire, what you’d say to both your past and future selves, and even what your thoughts are about the meaning of life.

we talk for hours, and in getting to know you, i immediately begin to care about you as a person. i suddenly want to give you everything i can, both figuratively and literally, and i am happy to do this even if it means self-sacrifice.

i pay close attention to what you say, and i make mental note of what i can give and how. the conversation shifts to your younger sister, and i pause to search through my carry-on for a small gift i'd been carrying – a soft, cute snow fairy plushie with a pink flower, since pink is her favorite color. i give it to you. you refuse. i insist. eventually, you take it, with much thanks and still looking a bit unsure about whether or not you should actually accept despite my repeated assurances.

later on during the flight, you're clearly struggling to find a comfortable way to sleep. you don't have a neck pillow. i do. i offer it to you. you refuse. a little time passes, and i offer it to you again and ask, "are you sure you don't want it?" you pause, clearly conflicted, ask if i'm planning to sleep. i say no. you take it with many many thanks, and go to sleep.

the flight lands, you wake up, give the pillow back, and then in the rush of disembarking, we don't even get the chance to say the most cursory of goodbyes – not even a simple, "it was nice to meet you."

at baggage claim, i avoid eye contact and stay on the opposite side of the ring, because the time for any sort of farewell has passed and i don't exactly know what i should say anymore, so i say nothing.

and just like that, i walk out of the airport and you're gone from my life forever. i never got the chance to tell you i'm so glad you were a part of the 80,000 people i will ever meet in my lifetime, even despite the fact that i know you'll never be a part of the much smaller circle of lasting relationships.

i never got to say that even though you're disappointed in your academic performance, even though you wish you worked harder early on in life, i still think you're a remarkable individual, and i valued this conversation more than many i've had with people whose credentials might be more impressive on paper.

you have a special gift for communication -- you said this yourself, and it's true. talking to you was easy, and effortless, and interesting, and light.

i don't expect you to give back -- i never expect reciprocity, because i think that would be absolutely unfair and immoral. i actively fight against reciprocity in many cases because i know that socially, it's seen as an expectation, but i detest when people think i only do things out of expectation that the favor will be returned. in my eyes, that's not kindness, that's manipulation and selfishness.

so i don't know why it still hurts every time i form a connection that i know won't last. our lives are so wildly divergent that there is realistically a miniscule chance we could stay friends, even if we exchanged contacts -- which we didn't.

i didn't ask, and neither did you.

so why does it feel like a piece of me leaves with you every time our worlds disentangle, never to collide again?

i read a post recently where someone said, "i feel like i fall a little bit in love with everyone i meet."

i think this is true in my case. not romantic love (of this i am certain), just love.

and, aptly, i think the best way to describe the way i'm feeling right now is heartbreak.

but i'm reminded of something you said during our conversation about regrets -- that even though you were heartbroken by a past relationship, you're still glad to have met someone who mattered to you. you wouldn't go back and change the past so that you never met them in the first place; you valued the happy times spent together, even if it hurts a little to think about now.

i think the same is true for me.

i won't stop striking up random conversations, and i won't stop myself from forming genuine, deep connections with others for the sake of avoiding the fallout.

when i was younger, i thought caring so deeply about others and feeling emotions so strongly was a curse. but i've come to appreciate it as the gift that it is, too.

my life will be much harder in many respects. this, i have come to accept. but though the floor may be lower, the ceiling will also be higher. i experience joy and gratitude just as deeply as i experience heartbreak and sorrow.

if i could go back and choose, i'm not sure i would choose this again. but as for this life, i'm determined to make the most of my deep capacity for emotion, which means embracing the lows alongside the highs, and trying to make the baseline trend upward to the fullest extent possible.

some notes ~

after sharing this with a few close friends, i received some questions that i think would be helpful to add here as context.

why do I care about people so much? why not spectate? why actively try to look for ways to help in every conversation despite the fact it is effortful?

hmmm. honestly, this doesn't feel effortful for me. i don't sit down with someone and think, "okay, now i'm going to look for ways to help this person." my brain just tends to gravitate there naturally, without conscious intention.

similarly, it's not that i actively try not to spectate - i don't fight against some urge to remain detached. the caring just happens. one moment we're talking about your weekend plans, and the next moment i'm mentally cataloging the things you mentioned wanting, the problems you're trying to solve, the small ways i might be able to make your life a tiny bit better.

it’s just a natural tendency for me i suppose.

elaborate on why life will be much harder in many respects?

the challenge with feeling everything so deeply is that this intensity seems to be a uniquely "me" trait (or at the very least, incredibly rare). in most of my connections, i find myself caring more, feeling more, remembering more than the other person does.

this creates an inevitable imbalance, which, predictably, often leads to hurt, since i feel more attached to others than they do to me.

and so i find myself perpetually on the deeper end of every connection, caring more than i'm cared for, remembering longer than i'm remembered.

author's note from the future: that line makes it sound worse than it actually is! i've been working on this quite a bit and am much happier now than i was feeling when i wrote this. i'll also say that even when i was acutely aware of this phenomenon months ago, it didn't bother me very much.

to be clear, the main impetus for this piece was the sadness of leaving, of losing a connection -- not necessarily sadness that the connection felt more real for me than for the other person. i care much less about the latter than this piece might lead you to believe. upon further reflection, i've concluded that my hurt stems much more from the fact that when people in life inevitably move forward, i feel a deep sense of sorrow that they are no longer part of my life, and i no longer part of theirs. knowing the sadness i feel is not normal makes it worse, because i wonder at why i'm feeling so much over something so little.

the hurt that i experience stems from deep connection being lost, which matters much more to me than a perceived imbalance in caring.

if I could go back and choose, what would I change to?

this is perhaps a simplistic answer, but i think i’d choose a normal level of attachment instead of the extremely deep attachments I tend to form.

final note

to be clear, the above piece doesn’t apply to every relationship i have. but, interestingly, it does seem to apply, with some degree of regularly, to both my closest circle of friends and random strangers i barely know.

a bimodal distribution!

why, you ask?

of this i am also uncertain.