Absence and Distance
Change has been a big theme this year. It always is for everyone, every year; that's why tarot cards, psychics and horoscopes can predict a change in work, relationships or finances and can allude to some ambiguous influence of a male figure. Change is still coming for me this year and not in the dark and ambiguous tarot-style foreboding sense I usually feel. The change this year has been visceral and the change to come is tangible.
In many ways, my world is exactly the same and has changed only in the ways you'd expect for a university graduate. I walk the same streets, listen to the same songs and watch my friends and I make the same silly mistakes. Yet something feels different in the air: The air feels thinner, smoother, with less resistance, and yet, I am keenly aware of my own presence as it moves and cuts through it. I am also acutely cognizant that something is missing. It is not missing from me, but from the invisible landscape of my life. It is as if I am in the matrix and I get the sense that just in the corner of my eye, just out of my field of vision, there are a few pixels missing. My father died less than three months ago.
And now, without a father, I am entering a new phase of my life. I emigrate to Dubai for work in the next few weeks and, at first, I was scared; the future of friendships is rocky and unclear enough post-uni when you are all crammed into the same smoggy city, let alone when you are a thousand miles away. However, in the most morbid way, the death of my father has given me a certain outlook to face the fear of isolation and loss that comes from being parted with my closest friends.
There is a huge difference between being apart and being gone. Before my dad died, he lived in the south of France, yet the moment I knew he was gone, I could sense that difference in the air. If I reach out with my heart or soul or, well I don't quite know what sense it is, the force maybe?, I know he isn't here, like a missing pixel out of the corner of my eye. It's different to when I lost my three grandparents or acquaintances at college, something about how much influence or exposure you have to them perhaps. I held the man who gave me life as ash in the palm of my hand, watched him blow away on the wind: he isn't just not around. He is gone.
This is how, in some opposite sense, I am facing the separation with my nearest and dearest more positively. They will not be gone. I have had to learn the hard way that absence and distance are on a greatly spiritual level and intensely physical one at the same time. I can call my friends, my boys, my family or fly to see them. I can know that they are continuing their lives, just as I am, having drama at work or with girls that I will hear about eventually. I can know in my mind and heart that they are distant, but not absent from the milieu of my life. Though, sometimes, the loss of my father makes me want to pull people close or paranoid and anxious about further loss, it also helps me to know that while they are about in the world somewhere, while there is opportunity for life and love, I will never be truly far from them and will always find my way back.
In many ways, my world is exactly the same and has changed only in the ways you'd expect for a university graduate. I walk the same streets, listen to the same songs and watch my friends and I make the same silly mistakes. Yet something feels different in the air: The air feels thinner, smoother, with less resistance, and yet, I am keenly aware of my own presence as it moves and cuts through it. I am also acutely cognizant that something is missing. It is not missing from me, but from the invisible landscape of my life. It is as if I am in the matrix and I get the sense that just in the corner of my eye, just out of my field of vision, there are a few pixels missing. My father died less than three months ago.
And now, without a father, I am entering a new phase of my life. I emigrate to Dubai for work in the next few weeks and, at first, I was scared; the future of friendships is rocky and unclear enough post-uni when you are all crammed into the same smoggy city, let alone when you are a thousand miles away. However, in the most morbid way, the death of my father has given me a certain outlook to face the fear of isolation and loss that comes from being parted with my closest friends.
There is a huge difference between being apart and being gone. Before my dad died, he lived in the south of France, yet the moment I knew he was gone, I could sense that difference in the air. If I reach out with my heart or soul or, well I don't quite know what sense it is, the force maybe?, I know he isn't here, like a missing pixel out of the corner of my eye. It's different to when I lost my three grandparents or acquaintances at college, something about how much influence or exposure you have to them perhaps. I held the man who gave me life as ash in the palm of my hand, watched him blow away on the wind: he isn't just not around. He is gone.
This is how, in some opposite sense, I am facing the separation with my nearest and dearest more positively. They will not be gone. I have had to learn the hard way that absence and distance are on a greatly spiritual level and intensely physical one at the same time. I can call my friends, my boys, my family or fly to see them. I can know that they are continuing their lives, just as I am, having drama at work or with girls that I will hear about eventually. I can know in my mind and heart that they are distant, but not absent from the milieu of my life. Though, sometimes, the loss of my father makes me want to pull people close or paranoid and anxious about further loss, it also helps me to know that while they are about in the world somewhere, while there is opportunity for life and love, I will never be truly far from them and will always find my way back.
M xxx
Sorry for your loss.
ReplyDeleteIt was very emotional. It touched my heart and soul so deeply in many different ways . I hope you are enjoying your life in Dubai