My closest friends in life did not have this inner world. The one that I had, and saw my family members escape into, too. It’s obvious in hindsight. They built outer worlds.

They still do.

I’m not sure they even realized how challenging their days were. My two closest friends had often confusing and tense family lives. Homes that were very different from mine. Divorced parents, frozen dinners, and a lot of unrequested independence. They managed beautifully, in hindsight. Although, at times, their pain did gather to pour from their shoulders onto mine, onto others. Out came lashing words from soured tongues of hurt deep inside.

This is trauma; childhood trauma. It stems into our patterns and behaviors as adults. This is no secret, anymore, as society gains increasing awareness to stored emotions and the energetic body. Once you get into it, a lot of things are trauma.

To love deeply and experience change is trauma, even. Like my childhood- a dream pouring across a canvas of a family rooted in love and childlike wonder. Innocence. No one ever told me I had to leave that canvas, that the paint would pour from it’s edges, overflowing. That it would come to be non-vacant to me. That the peak of my youth and my innocence was only seconds from it’s long and steep descent into humanly decay. No one could have prepared me. Not even myself.

I was acutely aware of my being a child. I knew it was to be savored. It occurred to me more often than any other friend I had or person I knew. I’m not sure it even ever occurred to them at all, really. That this time is limited. This veil is the thinnest. Our innocence leads us to magical lands of imagination and creation- that they won’t be here forever. Was I clinically anxious or wise beyond my years? Perhaps a mixture of the two. And such is life. The duality of it all- practical and philosophical approaches, the polarity of our human experiences and the day that falls and rises amidst it all occurring. So just as the day comes and fades, so do we. Aging away from our youths, into our lessons, and eventually into our wisdom. Rooting deeper into whatever we focus on as we go. Tying ourselves tighter to the things we can’t bear the thought of leaving.

To lose people we once loved, even if it wasn’t really a loss, is trauma. It breeds future feelings of abandonment if not nurtured correctly. My brother, my past relationships; Most of my life I had lost people and things I loved, with no time to forgive the familiarity as it slid out the door.

New people enter, slowly change and close the door on their way out, too. Just as the leaves change, so do we.

I understood now why so many holiday away from winter. And I can fathom the comfort of being in a relationship. Does the coldness of winter ache as deeply when you’re the center of someone’s warm rays of love? Does having people to share in life with carry some of the weight?

Didn’t someone say loneliness is like smoking 7 packs of cigarettes a day? And do those in solitude have a clearer sense of things? Of the world and of existence? What’s to gain from solitude?

While I know I’ve surely gained universal perspective from my solitude, what was once merely a chapter or a concept in a science text book, has become a source of wonder and pain-and my life’s inner rotation. Orbiting, facing the harsh but wondrous realities of the human experience. Am I still smoking the packs if I’m keeping an eye to the sky (for Mac Miller), and my head in the clouds?

The more I learn, the less I know. I don’t know everything and I’m sure no one will. We are not meant to. Phil Good said, “what you don’t know, the universe hasn’t provided the answers to, yet… If you don’t know what you’re doing, two thumbs up.” This energy of surrender resonates with my pinched shoulders, always chasing an outcome or an answer. But what for, really? What does it matter what any outcome is? Everything is changing all the time and we’re getting where we’re going one way or another.

I can’t help but think of an old friend every time Phil Good appears. She eased my loneliness and it’s weight, temporarily. She, too pondered the universal truths. But there was a friction. A cable pulled tight under a cable car, sparking up. Heat, friction, the weight of the car, all at once.