Most of the change I have experienced in my life has come from the outside. All of a sudden these random, volatile events landed with a bone-jarring thud in the middle of my everyday. Yet lately I've been experiencing changes of a different sort: the softer, more subtle kind that occur much quieter, almost too quietly to notice. The change that occurs internally.
I've always considered myself to be an open person; that my accessibility was something of which I was proud. I thought being happy meant being available to whatever came my way. Letting things, people, events, come and go. Everyone had access to my head and my heart, and everyone affected me, as I affected them. It was a good plan, and it worked well for me.
I've come to realize that while there's nothing wrong with that idea, it doesn't hold up. You change, as life changes you. Somehow I had kept this this deranged notion that innocence meant staying the same. But I guess to deny change is to deny life, and is really, pretty tragic.
I can't remain "open" forever. I know now that being open also means being exposed. I realize that you should give yourself to someone, until they give you reason not to. And when that occurs...you must give up on them. Some people shouldn't be allowed access, don't have the right to flit back and forth and in between. We are all precious people, our emotions are fragile. We tremulate and worry and are hurt by each other. And some bridges were meant to be burnt.
And once that happens, you start to feel this incredible liberation. It's very comforting to begin to understand why certain people are no longer in your life, and why they no longer have any place in your life. You can begin to define yourself by what you are not, instead of what you are. And that is a powerfully concrete thing; a solid, bold line in a luminous, transient personality.
