You know, I was looking at the pictures and I couldn't believe it. Were these people really once part of my life? Was it true, or was it all a dream? What was his voice like? What was her perfume smell like? I remember touching those hair and hands. I remember catching the radiant gaze on me and the resounding laughter. Something was tugging inside me with a tense string now. It seemed as distant to me as my first trip to kindergarten or my first horseback ride. It had been in my life, but so long ago that it was losing all meaning. Memories of those people brought me more of a vague feeling. It happens when you haven't tasted something in a long time and suddenly stumble upon a taste or a smell, and try hard to remember the last time it happened to you. A month or two or half a year? Years or decades? Such memories were no longer something you revisit like an old favorite cassette tape. Rather, such memories were nothing more than a thing you acquired once upon a time, but to which you have no need to return. Sometimes, you pick it up, dust it off and wipe it down, smiling involuntarily, remembering how it came to be in your possession and putting it back. You forget it again and don't touch it again.
It seems so strange to you that this thing is present. You don't focus on it, but when it catches your eye, you don't immediately realize exactly how connected you are. It's something slowly fading away.
Here I was, and I didn't understand what it was that connected me to these people now. There were no meanings or meaning. Just some memories and moments of life. Questions were now popping into my mind such as: "What was it about this person?", "Was it really? Had I really ever allowed that to happen? Did I really ever experience that?" On the one hand there was a kind of longing that chilled me, made me cringe, and on the other hand, I wanted to remember, "What was it like?" It was all a remnant of the old.
When you begin to immerse yourself in the present life, the past becomes something so simple and unnoticeable, like a palm print on glass. Like a fogged-up car window or a dirty shoe impression. Something that doesn't make sense anymore, but happens from time to time. Something that reminds and makes itself known.
You don't speak of people who have passed away with a shudder in their voice, but rather with a resigned tone and sometimes even a smile. You remember it as something distant and pleasant.
Then it is called the past. Really the past. You don't live it anymore. You let go of those moments and forgive everything that was then.
It's amazing how a person changes after a mental crisis. Slowly the happy moods and experiences that once were there disappear. There comes a period of acute pain and increased anxiety. Indifference and apathy come later. All this alternates and mixes up. Cornered, he doesn't know where to step. The wounds, so deep and open, become the torment of the patient. But, it's also amazing when it slowly goes away. Sometimes you can't believe it: "How is it that I live? Am I really living?" Everything becomes so strange and incomprehensible. Something makes sense again. A person comes out clean, renewed, as if from a bath. It would seem that after suffering and torment, one becomes more perfect. But, at the same time, so detached. He reaches for the warmth he has long been deprived of. But, approaching like a fire, he is wary.
The realness and love of life is something that does not come to everyone. And if it does come knocking at the window, it goes unnoticed. We are not immediately aware of life as it is. In all its manifestations and passions. We're always trying to strive somewhere and look for it when it's right in front of us. Life, it is the manifestation of everything. And loving life as it is is the hardest part. To love that mundane part: like brushing your teeth or dusting the shelf. To love the gloomy part: when you're longing or when you can't breathe makes you want to scream.
Love that hard part: experiencing circumstance and loss. All of it: from the slightest shiver through my body to the note of another's voice. It can be impossible. But, the essence of life, in loving it. One must learn to love this big and difficult world. The past and the future are not what we are now. It's either once happened or will still happen. But, the present is what we are. Often we are confused about what is happening to us: it is dragging us down. Past wounds and bruises keep us from looking at life with love. Impossible... We should.

You know, it's so strange for me to remember intimacy with any people. Honestly, society is alien to me and I try not to get attached, but when you have someone in your life who becomes a part of you and your life, when you lose that, you begin to break down. And when, suddenly, you go back to a time when you were doing fine without those people, it all becomes so strange, didn't you ever trust and believe in someone like that? It becomes impossible: How could I have allowed such intimacy? Why did I worry about it?
I think this will be familiar to those singles who live by the principle of "not being part of someone or someone else's world." It's addictive. That's why people like us try to avoid that kind of thing. But once we've tried it, the hardest thing is to lose it. And how hard it is to come back to being part of someone else's world. Such a possibility seems not only unthinkable, but even unpleasant and creepy. To trust and love someone so much? Nonsense. This is how I feel after breaking up and losing loved ones. I feel that from now on, I am not bound by anything and can no longer be bound. It's a feeling that can be both punishment and pleasure at the same time. It all alternates from time to time.
The most unpleasant thing is when you want to be a part of someone, but, you can't. It is as if with the loss of those people, you also lose the ability to feel and be related to someone. You have kinship feelings with someone, pleasant moments and feelings, but it is not something meaningful. After all, if you suddenly had to snap out of your seat and leave, you would leave everything and everyone behind. But, if it had happened when you were really loved and bound by that feeling as well as your own, you would not have been able to leave. Now everything becomes possible, except getting close to some person.
And it's up to you to decide whether it's scary or not. But it sometimes scares me to think that I will never again be able to experience the kind of family and family feeling that I felt and had felt before with people from the past. And the memories of those people no longer give me that feeling or, conversely, the anguish of those days. Now it's just another thing put on the shelf like a souvenir.
A souvenir of my life.