[brains] musing on missing people

[wispfox]

So, as I already know, people have to get to a certain undefined point in my head for me to miss them. And, I seem to not stop missing people who have gotten to that point, although (depending on amount of contact) may miss them with less frequency and/or intensity. I appear to need at least some level of consistency with a person in order to miss them without some sort of association in my head (and that consistency is the most intensely difficult to adjust to the complete loss of - although modifications are usually fine - but also the one that I can eventually stop having happen. Associations, not so much. They seem to be always).

I appear to have categories for missing of people, which fascinates the hell out of me, and which I noticed on my drive home today.

There are people who I miss who I have lost contact with. Missing happens, I can't do anything with it beyond think about them for a while, I move on. I don't expect to see them again. I adjust.

There are people who I miss who I expect to have good amounts of quality contact with at a later date. Sometimes the missing means I contact them with purpose to spend time together (if they are nearby and I have energy/time), sometimes it means dropping a random email or (very rarely) calling them simply to say 'hi'. Sometimes I don't do anything at all with it, most often because I already did something recently enough that I feel silly doing something additional, but sometimes because the missing is too brief (usually means I don't have the energy to _do_ anything which would help with reconnection). It's interesting to me that simply saying 'hi', or that I miss someone (through email or phone or something) _helps_, some. Perhaps because my missing of people is, at least in part, some level of wanting connection renewal activities.

Between these two end points are people who are in weird states. Sometimes it means that I haven't quite put them into the 'don't expect to see them again' category, perhaps because the loss is too recent. Sometimes it means that I have lost the meat of whatever got them into the category of people I miss (quality time, as much as I hate that word, also known in my world as connection renewing activities), but I still see (or at least expect to see) the person often enough that I can't just put them into 'unlikely to see them again' category. I'm sure there are other reasons, but I'm not quite well yet and I can't find any others at the moment. This is the weird category for me, because it means that there are things other than the inside of my head and associations reminding me of these people and triggering the missing of them, and (usually) they are not people (for whatever reason) I can simply say 'hey, I miss you' to and have it help anything - probably because in the above paragraph, that works because I know I _will_ get good time with those people again. So I have no outlet for the missing of those people; at least no particularly useful outlet (although, sometimes, simply saying so to someone not myself helps).

It also confuses me to think about people who might _not_ always miss anyone who they have ever missed. I don't understand that idea. Not even a little. If you missed someone ever, why would you stop missing them? (less often, I understand, and perhaps less intensely)

Yeah. Hungry, tired. But these things were in my head. Perhaps because of the fact that I recently had a conversation about the sheer volume of email I can generate, which is often of no more content than 'hi, I miss you'. Not sure. So now I find food. And stuff. La!

Comments

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

When I "stop missing someone," it usually means I have substantially changed my perception of them -- for example, I now pretty much never miss my most horrible ex, who I obviously at one point thought not-horrible :) Sometimes it also means that I have pinned down more specifically what I miss and concluding that it's not actually the person but something else, usually a specific way that I felt with said person.

[bridgetester.livejournal.com]

That sounds right to me...

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Hmm! Ok. Yes.

I had forgotten about this. I think I have, in fact, _done_, this. It is, however, fairly rare, and has not had reason to happen recently. Probably why I forgot.

Thanks! Now I'm all pleased to have an answer! :)

[rosefox]

By "always miss" do you mean "constantly miss"? Because I don't constantly or even frequently actively miss anyone or anything; nearly ten years of LDRing has taught me a lot about sidestepping that and transmuting it into looking forward to the next time I see someone. The only people I'm prone to gut-ache-missing, in a way that lasts beyond a moment of something that reminds me of a person, are people I love who have died.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

By "always miss" do you mean "constantly miss"?

Nope. There is no one that I am missing _all_ the time, although there are sometimes people who get close for periods of time.

I mean always, as in they will continue to appear in my head many, many years later. Something will remind me of them, and I will miss them again.

sidestepping that and transmuting it into looking forward to the next time I see someone.

Hmm. See, I tend to do both at the same time, in the case of people I have a reasonable amount of expectation of seeing (and interacting with) them again. And, if it's someone I expect to see again, the missing is (usually) not painful, and if it _is_ painful, pinging them to say hi tends to remove the pain. And I'm not sure 'pain' is the right word in this case. Perhaps "urgency"...