hoping

It's so dangerous to hope. I will probably delete this before I post it, because if I hope for something, if I expect something, it almost never works out. And it's not really that it doesn't work out that hurts (and it does), but I think the worst is that I am disappointed. Better to have no expectations and roll with things as they come, happy and sad, than to perpetually be disappointed.

But, like listening to T Swift's Love Story, it feels so good and so terrible, simultaneously. And so...I hope for strength and knowing who I am and love god do I hope for love, I hope against all odds that my friendships are as beautiful as they are now, that they continue to blossom. I hope and hope that there will come a time when my people will remain with me and I won't leave and neither will they. That even though things will change there will be some constancy in my life, some people, where I can look back and say I have known this person for so long, and we still hang out once a week. God I want that. I think that is what I want more than anything right now. That I don't need to keep saying goodbye.

But that's life, right? Even if I stayed in Madison or moved to back to the Cities, things would change. People live, and grow old, and die. And maybe I have a misplaced sense of belonging or of constancy because we moved so often, because I have never managed to stay settled (even now, that I actively identify with a home). But if I didn't have that, I would still lose people, and it might even be harder to lose them, given that now I have a lot of practice.

There is a quote that I really like for this situation: "People are in your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime." (I don't know who said it.) I don't think putting people in boxes is as comforting as my identification with the spirit of it. I know that there are just times when you have to let people go.