“If only you could see me now”, I sigh as the sky turns pink.
My witch refills my cup with hot chocolate. “Would that make a difference?”, she wants to know. I love to visit the hay bales on the field behind the house every year!
I have always been so much more perceptive of group dynamics than the people around me were. Or, at least more than the people around me cared to admit they were. Either way, I have so often fallen in love with the feeling of being in a group and working towards a goal together. The way people start to move together like they could not have alone, the anecdotes they share, the possibility of understanding each other non-verbally, and the memories to keep.
“I think it would”, I respond, sit down and have a sip of my hot chocolate while watching the sunset. “It probably would make my skin glow, you know.”
“Yea, right.”
When being together like this, it sometimes felt like magic. Like a violet sparkle all over everything. It felt as if my skin glowed because it suddenly was right in place, just where it should be.
At this point, I sound irrationally enough to admit that I was conditioned into this feeling by growing up in a church and socializing in a cult-like community in my early childhood. If you learn to play your violin in a church group, it’s not just music. It’s cooking and eating together, it’s seeing the older students in their late teens getting engaged to each other, and it’s praying together, and going on trips together.
It owns you.
Later, I played my violin in a bigger, more official orchestra. I made friends with the girl I shared my sheets with, and we went on several tours together, where we shared our room, and became kind a close. Still, a few years we didn’t even speak anymore.
And I struggled with it.
I had the same feeling when I made friends during my first week in university, and I felt as if I had found people that I would forever be connected with in nerdy interests, but also these friendships didn’t last, and I struggled keeping my motivation going.
“So, are we having hot chocolate out here because you don’t have any other friends left?”, my witch giggled. “My feelings are honestly hurt.”
“At least I had them.”
For a while, I had grown so used to people leaving that I expected it everywhere. Especially, when there was this special kind of connection there that I needed so much. I caught myself checking my phone every few minutes waiting for a response, needing to read it, needing to feel seen, as if it was the only way to recharge my energy. And while doing so, I had been wondering how long I could keep it going.
I either needed this special feeling of togetherness so badly that it made me abandon plan and change careers in the wrong way, or it made me become socially awkward and avoid new contacts because I had never gotten over the old ones. Sometimes, I still am a 10 year old girl whose world is falling apart, losing people she had been relying on. And then again, I fell in love with a much older man, impressing him with everything I do.
Would I eventually go through a long and painful process of sobering out?
“I don’t think that’s how people work”, I tell my witch. “I don’t think we’re all just self-sufficient beings best left to ourselves.”
I also don’t want to live in a cult ever again.
When recently, I had spent a week at a seminar in the Netherlands, I had the most fun day and night studying and drinking with people with shared interests in the most beautiful city scape. We came from all over the world, and we will probably not meet again anytime soon, if at all.
And afterwards, I think I realized something this time can mean for me.
I can use those memories to recharge my energy whenever I need to.
Because the thing is that there, in the middle of these wonderful people, I made an admission to myself after having had a drink. I realized that I myself wanted to continue my research after my master’s degree. I did not even tell anyone, I just kept the thought to myself. And still it had found a home with these people. If you work with the right kind of people towards a goal, a week can feel like a year. And this thought so dear to me was born right there, in an illusion of forever.
“And you have waffle selfies with people that had been strangers to you only a day before to remember your goal”, my witch teases me, and I blush.
Once you reach the point where many people that shaped who you are have left or died, it can be terrifying to be yourself. Who am I gonna say this thing to? How do these moments feel less lonely?
“By knowing that those hay bales once were there”, I whisper.
“I have already accepted that you talk to yourself when you think I’m not around”, my witch giggles.
Yes, and I think it’s fine.
I think it’s fine to sometimes talk to someone that cannot be around anymore. I think it’s fine to find comfort in the thought of someone reacting in a way you can never see again. These memories are our own, and they are there for us to recharge. They tell me where to go next. My memories make me decisions feel less lonely.
I use my memories to recharge the energy to be me for just another day.
And I still don’t fear any trouble to hold on to the people I care about.
Because these memories are mine.
Mistress witch writes 