Reason, Season and Lifetime
by Brian A. "Drew" Chalker
People always come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do.
When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, or to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or even spiritually. They may seem like a godsend to you, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they just walk away. Sometimes they act up or out and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.
When people come into your life for a SEASON, it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season. And like Spring turns to Summer and Summer to Fall, the season eventually ends.
LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person/people (anyway); and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas in your life.
I was flicking through my "blogging notebook" a few days ago when I realised I'd made a note about a particular post idea, but I'd never carried it through. To be honest, I only really used the whole notebook idea for a little while I got over it. Usually I either blog about stuff on the spot when it's all fresh in my mind and I'm fired up about it, whatever it happens to be, or it just falls by the wayside and never gets blogged about.
But maybe this one is worth making the effort about. At least as a "stream of consciousness" post if nothing else (and, since I ended up writing pretty much all of it in Notepad at work, it kept me occupied).
As I started to think about the whole idea, I also went and re-found the piece at the top of this post, the Reason, Season and Lifetime text... I read it originally when it was doing the internet/email rounds a few years back (and it's nice to see that it's author has actually stepped up and claimed credit of it, hence why I included his name), and it made a fair amount of sense to me... in fact I think I ended up making it all fancy and printing it out to stick up in my office cubicle. Lord only knows where that piece of paper is now.
To be honest though, the original genesis of this idea goes back to sometime after
my birthday when I watched
Clerks II... specifically the bit at the end they're talking about their friendship... and I will freely admit that that whole scene made me tear up.
So, that, combined with the Reason stuff led me to realise something.
I just don't keep people in my life.
I have no best friend that I've known since childhood. I never kept in contact with any of the people I knew from any of my school days. I don't have a real connections with any of my extended family. Once I leave a workplace I might meet former workmates for a drinks session once or twice, but once I'm gone, I'm pretty much just gone. Sure, I'll say hi if I run into somebody in the street (unless of course I couldn't stand them), but I don't keep in contact with anybody for long.
When I moved out of home and started going out on the gay scene, I never really acquired a gay best friend... I mean, at the time I had
Ludo fulfilling all my best friendly needs, so I didn't really need another one, gay or otherwise (foolishly thinking that Ludo was going to be a Lifetime kind of friend, when instead he turned out to be a self-absorbed pain in the butt), so it just never happened. Then, when I came back for my second run at the scene some years later, I once again had various other people fulfilling the best friendly duties, who, like Ludo, weren't actually gay, and, like Ludo, have also vanished out of my life.
There are some notable exceptions to the "don't keep people around" rule...
Raury is one, he started off as a workmate way back when, and has been in and out of my life ever since... and he probably would still be around in some shape or form if he hadn't either died (well, I haven't heard anything in forever, so it's a possibility) or vanished off the face of the planet yet again (which will make it around the third or so time he's done the vanishing thing for a period of time)...
J is really the only other major one, although he's very much on the other side of the planet, and even if he does find his way back to this hemisphere and/or country, I very much doubt it will be to a geographically convenient place (ie, it won't be here in Adelaide).
But even they both seem to have turned into "Reason or Season" people (well, Raury certainly... the jury is technically still out on J)... especially since, from my experience, Reason people sometimes turn into Season people, or at the very least they start out as Reason people but then some of them hang around for a long time. Although that could just be me, keeping folks around the place longer than they need to be.
Maybe the whole thing is me... I mean, I know I'm not always the easiest person to be around or to be friends with (I can, on occasion, I guess, be somewhat, well, high maintenance... who would have guessed), so maybe when the opportunity comes up, they grab the chance to leave with both hands and run off into the wide blue yonder. Even
Lownee, who I would have sworn, come hell, high water or inconvenient amounts of either distance or Ludo (and seriously, by the end, ANY amount of Ludo was inconvenient) would have been a Lifetime person, even she disappeared into the ether without so much as a backwards glance.
Maybe it's all part of my Karmic lessons/experience this time around... maybe I'm supposed to go through life pretty much unconnected from the people in it.
Seriously, with the grand exception of Ma, I really don't have any connections... nothing ongoing and meaningful in the here and now anyway.
The whole situation has, at various points throughout my life, bummed me out in varying degrees... I have complained on more than one occasion (okay, technically I can only actually remember one big whinge to another person about it, but there have probably been others) about the lack of a gay best friend... just somebody roughly the same age as me (plus or minus 10% standard deviation), whom I'm not attracted to (or, at least, not very much), who's not in a relationship, who I can go out and do "gay" things with... nothing sexual (hence the "not attracted" thing), just clubbing (although I think that boat has sailed, and my clubbing days, at least here in Adelaide, are long since over), or go and see a gay themed movie or play, maybe go to the Pride parade, or a
Feast event or two, or just an afternoon on Rundle Street with lunch, boywatching and complaining about our lackluster love lives. Like the guys in
Broken Hearts Club (or, minus the death and supernatural themes, the boys from
Hellbent)... somebody who just "gets it"... you know.
Which is not the kind of relationship J and I have ever had, although he's the closest thing I've had to a gay best friend in... well, probably ever actually... our relationship started, exists and will most likely finish, on a whole other plane of existence from just about any other relationship I've ever had in my life, so it's kind of like comparing apples and shiny metallic fish.
I also know that if it wasn't for the efforts on J's part to keep himself on the radar screen, he would most probably already have slipped out of my life. When he's here in Adelaide, for whatever length of time, it's easy... we chat, we talk garbage or serious or whatever, we occasionally go out and do things (although, honestly, not so much)... but he's never going to be happy living here, and when he's away, even when he was only over in Melbourne, well, the wheels come pretty close to falling off. Partially because trying to talk to him online is just an exercise in frustration for any number of reasons (short attention span, appalling spelling, occasional tendency to self-involvement, etc), but also because, well... he's on the other side of the planet (or in another state, or whatever), having a whole young life of his own.
I don't do the distance thing well to be honest... J,
BlueDragon (my relationship with him has ground to a halt mostly because I don't really have much of anything interesting to tell him anymore, plus I've never been good at replying to things in my email inbox),
Bear (who I haven't actually spoken to in over four weeks, so that was a worthwhile
mini drama bringing him back into my life wasn't it)... as well as maybe a dozen others who I can think of off the top of my head... if they're far, far away, then, in the end they drift off. Sometimes because I just don't care anymore, sometimes because whatever thing brought us together is over... basically it's a whole world of "Reason".
Granted they don't need to be far away for me to let them drift... I'm not one of those people who just keeps names on his MSN (whether I've met the person or not) just because I chatted to them once or twice, but haven't spoken to them for the last six months. I actually have a "To be deleted" folder... and if I haven't chatted to them in some time, then into that folder they go for another little while... and if there's still nothing, then deleted they get. Sometimes they get blocked too if I really can't be bothered, but mostly I just delete them... and never ever hear from them again.
I'm not saying any of this with a whole "woe is me, my life is so awful, I'm so lonely" vibe... for the most part I like being alone (as I think
I mentioned once before alone is very different from lonely, and the two don't necessarily go hand in hand... you can be one without the other quite easily)... being an only child and all, alone is pretty much my default state.
Actually I had a thought about that today (the childhood thing) on my way back from lunch, since I'd stopped off at
Planet Party (which just opened here recently) to pick up this cute seahorse bag for part of Ma's birthday present (which is a whole other story in itself)... but obviously Ma was on my mind on the walk back... as was the thought that she's only ever really one bestest girlfriend (that I'm aware of)... and that only happened in the last ten years or so I guess. And she was never really "social butterfly girl" when I was growing up. So maybe that's part of it too, I dunno.
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