Fortress of People

People. Oh people, people, people. I learn from you. I become frustrated because of you. Joyous. Lovesick. Excited. So many different things we cause each other to feel. Sometimes we hate each other. Feel like we could be so much better off in the comfy place that is our imagination, where perfect things happen. But then we remember we need each other. Sometimes that imagination which can be so comfy can also be suffocating. Instead of helping us remember who we are, it makes us forget, gets us lost in a maze of too many thoughts. And in those instances we need someone to reinstate us into reality. Those of us who have such a person are lucky. Tremendously lucky.

So we build a fortress of people around us. Family comes first. For some that will mean blood relatives, that support that was built-in for us when we came into the world. But there are others who have less conventional families. Friends or mentors who have filled in the gaping holes left in the spaces where their built-in support was never built. Those sorts of families are just as real as those who share our blood. After that layer there is a layer of friends, comrades. Next, the lovers (though over time one lover is likely move into the family circle). We spend time creating this fortress. We make ourselves vulnerable to build it, because to build a solid fortress we have to be connected to the walls around us. How do we connect? By handing out little pieces of ourselves, very gently. That is why this fortress takes time, building trust is a meticulous process. Once it is gained however, we hand that person a little morsel of us that they can add to their hearts. In doing so we create a mortar unlike any other.

And yet some of the people leave still. After all that time. After we've let them become part of us. They just go away. And we have to decide what to do with that vacant spot. Maybe they weren't there long, what do we do then? Fill the vacancy right away? Do we mourn the loss? Do we work on forgetting them? Pretend they were never there?

No.

No, that cannot be right.

We have to leave the space. Yes, final decision, the space must remain. At least for a little while.

Why? Because it reminds us of that person, and maybe we don't want to remember the person right now, but some portion of our time with them has taught us something. Obviously, because there is a visible hole there. That person left an imprint, and we might as well use it for future reference. Maybe one day someone will fill that space and stay forever. Or maybe it will remain empty forever because it needs to be a constant reminder of everything we learned from that person, even if they were not there long. We opened up to them, we folded them into our fortress, so we must have learned something. And it is good to know our histories. No, it is good to feel our histories.

That way we know which things are good to repeat. And which aren't.