Reframing How You See Ephemeral Relationships
People dance in and out of your life, but there may be a deeper meaning behind brief encounters.
I‘m staring down the bridge crossing into my 29th year. I’ve moved around a lot, struggled to maintain friendships, and I’ve felt the slow sting of gradually losing people more times than I care to count. I’m a person who decided to prioritize my career, despite some of the friendships it’s cost me along the way. There are a lot of reasons I had to prioritize my career (since there were a few times in my life when I nearly faced homelessness as I didn’t have a family to fall back on), but it still came at a great cost sometimes.
There were a lot of years in my life where I’d be working twelve-hour shifts for days on end and cramming homework into every other free hour. Because of that, as much as I tried to keep up with friends who I cared for and be there for them, my availability was so tight that there were a lot of times I just couldn’t.
I’m by no means a psychologist or relationship specialist, but I’ve learned a few things from losing people when it was undoubtedly my fault. I read a book recently that nudged me to start thinking about relationships a little bit differently. Changing my thought process around how I approach these connections is…
