Absence

The emotional process of missing another is odd. There are a variety of ways we can feel it and a variety of ways the feeling can be triggered. More importantly, though, is the variety of different ways absence can be created.

The most common is the lack of physical presence. This absence is self explanatory and requires no analysis. This type of missing someone is alleviated when the two are reunited. Sadly, life is finite and our chances to be reunited are limited by the clutches of death.

More that mere physical absence, though, comes the emotional strain that occurs when someone is missed because a close bond has drifted, often on both ends, to a point where it is no longer recognizable for what it once was. When this happens and either party says they miss the other they are mistaken; they miss what the pair of who they both used to be shared.

Sometimes missing someone happens because one party changes significantly. This, too, is a scenario in which the party who is being missed is no longer available, does not even exist, to the party who is doing the missing.

A variation on the single party change is the revelation that someone whom you appreciated and liked is not really who they appeared to be. This type of missing often manifests with a form of resentment as the missed party for having misrepresented themselves but, often, it is our own fault for evaluating the other party incorrectly.

Furthering that trend becomes a large betrayal. The large betrayal, though, is one we inflict upon ourselves rather than one which is inflicted upon us. This happens when we build a fantasy of a person; design who we want them to be for us; and our design does not match who they really are. We miss not them, but who we imagined them to be; who we needed them to be; who we wanted them to be.

The last form of missing someone that is readily apparent to me is the form that is less severe than jealousy but is, in reality, the same. This is the missing we feel when we see someone is exactly who and what we want but they are that for someone other than ourselves. We miss the person we cannot have and, thus, resent the person and scenario we have instead.

I miss lots of people.

I miss people in all of these categories.

I wish I could stop missing people in the worst of the categories and be present in the lives of the people whose presence would alleviate missing them.

Mostly, though, I wish I could erase the people who I miss because of who I thought they were..... I wish I could erase who I thought they were and see them for who they are from the start.