“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

– Maya Angelou

I can remember the fondest memories of my childhood being times that I spent with my family. Although they weren’t always the happiest of times, I can remember the strong urge to break away for a period of time just to establish some time to myself; then seek them out again when I needed them. Interestingly enough, (even though I tried to deny it) even though I needed space and time away from them, deep down I didn’t want to be away from them for very long.

This feeling of solitude often left me feeling very empty. Although this was my time. A time for me to spend reflecting or in solitude, I could never let my mind wander away from them long enough. As I was in my middle school years (and perhaps even into my high school years) I could notice the emptiness even more, and I think I’ve finally come to understand it a little bit more as I’ve grown older.

I’ve always been very selective with my friends, and along with this selectivity I always tried to detach myself at times. Although I didn’t notice these things at the time, I notice it now as my own personal safety mechanism. You see, when I was younger, some of my cousins would come over and spend the night at my house for the weekend. The day they would leave (which was usually on a Sunday) always left me feeling empty. This emptiness is a feeling of sorrow and depression. Regardless of whether I knew they were going home or not, after they had left, I always felt alone when they would leave – even if my nuclear family was around. I believe that in my adult years, I knew about this feeling subconsciously and avoided getting close to others in order to save myself the grief of feeling this way when they would leave.

I felt like this epiphany hit me, minutes before I decided to write about this topic. This week, my family was out of town from Wednesday until today, so I volunteered to house-sit for them. I saw various people all week long, but I didn’t spend much quality time with any given individual until today. Today, I met up with a small group of my friends for lunch and we were at Mio’s sushi for almost two hours. After that, I spent some more time with Brittany and Andrew at their house, only to return to my parents’ house to let the dog out a few hours later. While washing dishes, Pat, Robin and Colton got home and we just spent time together. I then decided to head out so that I could run some errands before returning home.

Once I got home, however, that empty feeling returned to me as I couldn’t shake the feeling that I missed them all. I missed my friends that I had lunch with and I missed my family who I had just seen a couple hours ago. I find this feeling rather strange, as I don’t quite know or understand how to control it. I know that it’s been around since i was a little kid, but I didn’t realize how often it makes its presence known to me, until today.

I kind of feel as though this emptiness can allow me to become attached to people, but I also feel as though consciously knowing about this feeling can also force me to become slightly more introverted so that I might be able to prevent myself from feeling this sorrow in the future. Sadly, I don’t feel as though this feeling can ever really be quenched until I find “the one” that will always be there with me. Even then, I feel like I can relate (in a small sense) to people who are separated for a short period of time and the sorrow affiliated to that “emptiness” of their significant others’ presence. Granted, my small sense of that feeling surely cannot relate to how big of void that would leave amongst individuals that spend hours-upon-hours a day, together.

So many questions are filling up my mind now, so before I begin to wander into though, I’ll end this entry for now.