Track 5 - Is Missing

Missing someone is a strange feeling. Really, I don't think it makes much sense at all. What is there to miss? I can understand an amputee saying they really miss their right leg or left arm. I bet life was a whole lot easier before always having to pay twice as much as you need to for things like having to buy two shoes. What do they need a right shoe for? But to say you miss someone, baffling. I'm sure you didn't miss the person before you met them. Whoa, before you jump all over me, I know, I love that line in The Wedding Date when Nick says, "I think I'd miss you even if we had never met," too. It tickles my romantic bone. But really, you can't miss something you never have experienced. I can't say I miss speaking Baule. I never even been to the Ivory Coast much less spoken their second most common language.

Missing someone is accepting codependency. My whole life I have ultimately depended on me. Even when I was a babe, I had to breathe, I had to swallow the food my mother shoved in my sometimes unwilling mouth, and I had to dodge the cars like frogger when crossing the street. All of a sudden, sitting in your rocking chair on the porch of your life you realize that you feel a void. The void being created by the lack of presence of another human being. Why? That's the moment that you should really miss independence. You are no longer satisfied with just being yourself. Your own thoughts are no longer sufficient entertainment. You have given up freedom and are now reliant on second-hand happiness.

Silly it is. Perhaps sad too. What a waste of emotion to put such stock in the company of another. How does it happen? How does someone impact us to the point that missing someone can creep in like the winter air through the crack between the door and floor. You didn't invite it. You don't even want it inside. But, it forced its way in anyways. Ugh, stupid Missing.

To miss someone wrecks an otherwise calm, peaceful, and pleasant evening. Instead of enjoying a plate of nachos and not having to worry about the other person inevitably grabbing the best, middle, cheese smothered chip you had been saving for just the right moment, you sit there and wish for it. I once had someone tell me, "It's kind of funny how when you're around, I'm nervous. And when you're not, I kind of wish you were." In other words, they miss me. Its bonkers. Sayings like, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Why? Shouldn't presence make the heart grow fonder not the other way around? But, missing someone does that. When I'm missing someone, I miss feeling freewheeling and individualistic and long for those feelings to return.

Here's the kick in the pants, upon contemplating missing someone, I have realized something most intriguing. For how barmy missing someone is, when I don't have someone to miss when they are gone, I miss that feeling even more. I don't ever want to be in a place that I miss, missing.