there and back again

I changed my room today. I shifted the dresser over to make room for my bookshelf, which I moved from the opposite wall, and turned my bed ninety-degrees to the left so that now I am no longer parallel to the window but facing it instead. My bed is against the wall where my bookshelf used to be, and the space above it is alarmingly empty.

Change happens to all of us. And when it does, we like to change other things - smaller things - in order to feel as if we're still, on some level, in control. That would by my psychoanalysis for my rearrangement. Psychoanalysis aside, however, and the simple fact is that sometimes you just need to move things in your room. To see things from a different angle, to sit and write from a different corner. I've carved out a new space for my thinking/reading/writing, and it's in the shape of a square not a rectangle.

Things have definitely changed from two years ago (and I'm not just talking about my room, which I've rearranged twice). I feel more grounded and confident (not always, but comparatively), more self-aware and in some respects more determined. Such strong words, and I feel uncomfortable using them given that I'm so far from fully understanding what any of them actually mean. But I use them in the comparative sense, because that's the only way I can make sense of the changes that have taken place. And I would like to add that I would use these same words to describe the three closest people to me (besides my family) - also in comparison to who they were.

The morning of my best friend's wedding, my other best friend pulled out a box the four of us had kept all throughout highschool. We squealed and giggled (as girls do and should I suppose) at the entries written at ages fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, before digging for some more. When we finally came up for air, a break from laughing, my other best friend commented: 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'.

And maybe that's true. But while our 'innate characters' and certain mannerisms don't change, so many other things do. And such changes overshadow any comforting truisms one might find. Over time people learn to encourage and develop certain qualities while learning to control and supress others. Balance becomes the goal. Sharp corners are worn down, and the extremeites of their personality are muted, even-toned. All this takes place, of course, in order to produce more rational beings, complex people that become even more multi-faceted with every new experience. For instance, a trip to Italy can possibly change one's aversion to expresso (inconceivable I know, but let's imagine).

Last week's wedding held more meaning than any of us could ever have imagined. As my best friend (not the two above but the medic) observed in our conversation today, we were able to fight not only once, but multiple times, and have time to resolve our issues. And this allowed at the end three days of pure friendship. Unadulterated and so much like it was - like in the time those journals were written. The cry of these weeks, I think, was for 'what was' before this big change, before the first of us took that next step - left home, left whatever it was she held closest to her, for what the Bible tells us will be her most intimate everything.

In an email the day before the rehearsal, my best friend wrote: 'I was always expecting you to change, I guess maybe I just wasn't prepared for it to be right now'. I thought I understood it then, but now I know I didn't fully. Rearranging my room this afternoon, changing everything, it became clear. And I understand it now. That before the wedding, before this big momentous occasion, when everything that could change should change, when the most intimate of friendships - where we depended on each other to witness everything - should be broken for a new one, she just wanted us to be kids, as we were.

And sitting here now, in my new space, changed and rearranged - different and yet the same - I miss her. I miss us too, just as she said in the car that one night. It's as if seeing everything in retrospect, I can see what was and is, and what was so pure and innocent. As kids, as teenagers, we were extremes that fit - she ate slow and I ate fast so we both ended up eating normally; she liked candy and I didn't so I ended up eating so much that I got sick. I understand it now. But you can't go back, no matter how hard you try. And maybe that was part of the problem, of us both trying to hold onto what was instead of embracing what is.

I know we're all in good places now. All seeking out the path that God has laid out for us. Lines, which define any relationship and also connect those involved, need to be redrawn with respect to those changes which have been effected in all of us over time. And we need to learn to love in different ways because we're different shades of the same people. Change sneaks up on you; you can only ever feel it when it has reached a critical mass, never in its gradual increments.

I don't like how my room looks right now. It feels uneven, as if most of the heavy things are up against one wall. But from the other angle, from the door, my room has never looked more spacious, more open. And maybe that for this year will be a good thing. In essence, nothing has really changed, just rearranged.

I'm hoping it's true. That the more things change, the more they stay the same. The important things stay the same.

Posted on September 16, 2007 at 02:44PM