TCK Relationships Part 3 (Attachments and Detachments)

I sit there reading her update and I feel it rising in me. I must go to be there. I need to support my friend. It is far, and may be expensive, but I feel like it is so important.

This is my response to a lot of things that happen with my friends and it baffles some people. A friend graduating on the other side of the country. A wedding miles away, a baby shower barely in driving distance, a passing comment to come visit, and my mind is thinking how to fit it all in. The friendships seem to overshadow responsibility. 

Then there are other times when I can't bring myself to answer an email or a text. Where I don't want to leave the house or see a friendly face. Where it all seems like too much effort, and to what end?

I know I am not the only person to do this. This piggy-backs off of the last post on loss, but with a twist. The twist comes in the form of that alternative wretched question, "yes, but where do you call home?"

There are warring concepts in a TCK life that result in this seemingly bi-polar attachment. I think it is why I can cling to a TV show for a month and then abandon it all together out of nowhere. The loss is so real. We have a habit of letting go of things, of people. We feel worn out from that constant attachment and detachment. But then, home is not a place to us. It is people we have met. It is the person who sat next to us when we found out our grandmother died a world away, the person who sat through that rough class and shared notes, the person who borrowed clothes and never gave them back, the person who saw us cry. 

We attach and attach and attach because we have to and long to and love to, and then we let go and let go and let go because we also have to. 

We flourish in new environments and with new people, but we always have in the back of our minds how we will inevitably let them go as well. 

It's why we feel we must fly across the world to be at a wedding, but are afraid to answer the phone. It is why we offer up as much of ourselves as we can spare at a moment's notice, but hide in our rooms when the time to give ourselves up arises. 

It is why the simple act of coffee is both wonderful and terrifying. Hold on, let go. Feel at home, lose your home. Have your friends, lose your friends. Feel loved, feel loss. They go so tightly hand in hand that we cannot separate the fingers but must navigate the paradox of up and downs that each one brings with it. 

Where do you run in and where do you run away?