Attached

I like to think that I'm pretty realistic, almost borderline pessimistically boring if you would like.

Logic dominates most of my thoughts. Sometimes it is really awesome, like when I have a 5 page political science analysis paper due the next day I can whip that baby out in less than 2 hours.

But sometimes it gets in the way of, well, living life. I don't take as many risks as most people would. And because I don't base my decisions largely on feelings, I tend to be very practical with most things.

{except shoes, we all know that is a lost cause.}

There is, however, one part of my life that I have yet to logically control.

I get attached to people and things.


Being a person of logic and deductive reasoning, feelings are annoying to me.They were never explainable nor were did they ever make sense. In my world, it just didn't seem to make sense when people base their decisions on feelings. 


In Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the definition of feelings is:


1. the undifferentiated background of one's awareness considered apart from any identifiable sensation, perception, or thought.





Nothing, even the very definition, makes much sense. But as a human being, I feel whether I chose to or not.

The hardest part of feeling is attachment. It logically does not make sense to get so worked up for people who have not betrayed, hurt, or permanently left you in any shape or form, so to feel  sad or upset about a lost attachment can be frustrating.My friends, my family, my professors, my co-workers, and my class mates are all victims of my attachment.

It's not that I just feel a unique bond or just get really happy to be their friend, but the type of attachment I feel to some of the people in my life is like a 15 inch round solid iron rod, me at one end and the person at the other end.

So when the semester ends and I realize that I will never see the same classmates or have the same professor again, I tear up. Every. Single. Time.

When my two best friends got married last year, I cried. Several times.

When my co-workers announce that it was time for them to quit after 2-4 years of working with me, I almost want to stomp my feet and throw a fit right then and there in the restaurant.

Every time I have left for a trip or extended stay without my family, I cry in the terminal and onto the plane.

So now that graduation is looming ahead for my friends and I, it dawned on me that these iron rods of attachment will not be strong or long enough to maintain my connections with some of these people. Whether it be married, whether it be distance, that dis-attachment still stings.

Today I received more unhappy news about a co-worker who , most importantly is one of the most amazing person I know , is quitting. I didn't know what to say.

As I realized that I will probably never talk or see them again after they have graduated and go on to grad school, the bottom of my stomach felt like it was being weighed down by a bowling ball.

It's never easy to lose someone close to you, but for someone who disgusts the thought of feeling and then to have to feel upset/sad about irrationally thinking that a relationship was lost is even worse.

Because while I would like to stomp my feet and beg for them to never leave me, the logical  {thank goodness} part of me forbids it.

It is just not logical to feel, an undifferentiated background of one's awareness considered apart from all other perceptions, sensation or thought, so strongly about something so vague and silly as a bond between a person. Because it's not like those people are forever gone, it just feels that way.


As my favorite scientists, Sheldon Cooper, says, "...Let me step in and assure you that my research will go on uninterrupted, and that social relationships will continue to baffle and repulse me."