I think I’ve been too distant lately.

Sometimes I get consumed by a thematic obsession.

Or that’s the poetic way to frame it. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I hyperfixate — or maybe I’m mistaking the normality of thought for a grander endeavor.

Regardless, I have been thinking a lot recently; thinking about this dizzying feeling I have at the back of my vision. There’s something just out of focus that I’m trying to describe, and the fact that I can’t makes me all the more intent on catching a true glimpse of whatever this thing actually is.

So I don’t know if that’s hyperfixation, philosophy, or ego — but sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who sees the world from whatever this angle I’m stuck at is. Maybe that is a bit self indulged, but still — there’s this distance that it feels like I have from everything — and everyone — else.

Sometimes, at least.

The thing about distance is that everyone assumes it means far away — and I guess it does, in some sense. But everything is only ever referential; I never said what direction I was traveling, though I’m sure you assumed. Sometimes being distant means focusing in too much on any one thing. There’s a very specific frame we all operate within, and if you zoom too far out — or too far in — there’s a kind of breadth this necessitates. So I’ve been putting too much distance between myself and the world, but I’m not always sure which way that actually means I’ve gone.

I think people miss this — but maybe I’m too far away to truly know what anyone else can see.

The world feels very solid to me, which is — all things considered — somewhat ironic. 

Or maybe just my world does, but I think this too is with a kind of distance. Memories and ideas feel like this tangible thing to me. Like I can raise my hand up and feel their weight, and I know whereabout in the world I left them behind — but this brings with it a kind of separateness from the world we often describe as ‘the real one’. 

I remember where and when within my own mind I had an idea, as vividly as if I had stumbled over it while walking in the park. Writing a sentence down feels like placing it within the world, and if I need to recall something I read for work or what I texted my friend it’s like trying to recall where I left my keys.

But to travel into this other world, where ideas and thoughts are physical, brings me away from the one outside my head.

I wonder if other people are like this too, because I can see the distance between all of these things. I know how far away an idea is — from myself, or from the others that I’ve had. I can see their shape and their relational quality to one another.

That distance is tangible to me.

The weird thing, then, is that I kind of feel this for everything — not just the chapters in a book. For memories and dreams and the stories I make up in my head. And it feels confusing, and hard to keep track of where it all actually is. Like every part of my mind is just variations of the same base relations — different ways of connecting these internal objects together, and I don’t think you’re supposed to think so deeply about any of that.

It’s hard to keep seeing the whole if you zoom in too much on its constituencies — and I think this distance keeps me from feeling like myself.

The world is physical, and so we must be too. 

Necessarily. Identity isn’t some metaphysical quality we all have — it’s physical, as we are.

All we are is only ever going to be the actualized, and sometimes when I go for a walk or I have a quiet moment to myself I look around and this is all I can feel. Everything I am, in this moment — and forever — is atomic in nature. We are a point in spacetime, the tiny subset of reality that constitutes our corporal form — which as you recall, can only ever be this solid mass we see in the mirror. Our memories, our emotions — how tired we feel and the annoyances of work, still with us after hours — it’s all just a thing. A physical thing, physically with or made of us. 

Maybe distance really is the right metaphor then. We travel away from who we are and what we felt — experienced — simply by living through time. 

I don’t know. Sometimes I think I get too far away from it all, either too zoomed out or too focused in, and I can see all the space that is between me and who I used to be. 

It feels kind of lonely.

I don’t think like I used to, and I don’t feel what I once did. But I can see — months or years away from me — the person who was that. And when I look down I see that I’m not him. And it’s not always bad, because many parts of me used to be — but still, the absence of who I once was makes me feel far from myself now.

I think about death a lot — relatively at least. I doubt I’m spending the healthy amount of time on this; though I’ve never really been an expert on fitness. 

When we travel away from ourselves, so too do we travel away from others. As we are physical then all else must be too. 

I can see the way my brain used to work — but that’s not me anymore. And I can see the impact other people — who are no longer here — had on me; but those interactions are gone. My brain has been warped by distance, and whoever that was is no longer me. 

To be close to someone is to be changed — and that’s delightful. But everything changes us, and when someone is gone they stop being able to. 

It’s not that in this absence the world changes us back, but it changes us into someone new. We are physical. The presence of someone in our life is physical, as I keep saying. As if we were made of clay, the force of another pushes new shapes into our form — and when someone dies, or leaves, those interactions stop. As obvious as it sounds, that lacking once again carves something new into us — but it’s a different kind of weight pushing down, and it flattens out so much of what that other person added to our life.

It makes us distant from them.

I think I miss Muffin. She was a dog and she died. And the other day I was walking a different dog, whose name coincidentally also starts with ‘M’, and I realized I’ve taken on too much distance, and I no longer have the impression my Grandmother made on my life. At least it’s not the same, in a very deep sense. And I can see all that space between the person who felt her influence and me, but I’m just not the same as when she was here.

I can see the way my vision warped around the person I used to be, and now I see how a month of experience has changed so many of my intuitions — mostly about non-profit legal compliance and the right time to eat lunch. I am physical, and I have physically morphed into someone new.

I’m so different from who I was, and yet I’m so unchanged — and that’s so frustrating, because either way I still can’t feel the presence of my grandmother anymore; all I can feel is the understanding that once I saw a world with her in it, and that very act made me irrevocably different — in the best kind of way.

Now it just makes me feel distant.

I’m terrified of this, I think.

Of being so far away it means I’m truly alone. 

I don’t want time to flatten out of me the presence of those still alive.

We are physical, and the presence and love of others is therefore physical too. And I don’t want to lose it. To know it’s forever misplaced. To know it’s too far away to ever touch again.

And I don’t want to be so distant all the goddamn time.

I write mostly for me, I think. 

Writing too is physical. The words are, but so is the version of myself that is captured here. It’s a subset of me, and it’s a subset of my thoughts. Sometimes it’s nice to see that someone else thought the way I might now, or to see how I’ve moved away from how I used to think — at least when the things I’m thinking are a bit unpleasant.

It’s not really me, but it’s a piece that I can relate to — and there’s still some comfort to that.

I feel more solid than I did a year ago. But I don’t think I feel less distant. Maybe I feel even further away. I think I need to go outside more often, but that scares me a little — because I’m not sure I know how to properly ground myself, even when I’m touching it.

I’m so much happier than I was a year ago, and yet I still feel like I’m too far away. And though I do sometimes feel sad, even now, I think that’s how it is for most people too. 

Maybe it feels like lying, but when I get too much like this I try to breathe in and summon a different kind of energy from deep within. Maybe I don’t believe it, or can’t, in this moment — but there are other truths beyond what I see now, and I try, sometimes, to repeat them back to myself. 

In this moment I am distant, in the next I will not be. Less so, at least.

I’ve lost who I was. 

That’s depressing, I think. At least it makes me sad that by doing this thing I call ‘living’ I’ve also lost people I care about. Or that losing them took something away from me as well.

I feel distant, and that makes me feel sad — because I want to be cared about, and how can I expect anyone to do that for something so far away.

It’s hard to know if we can ever truly cross the space between two people. We are physical, and so the interaction with other physical things will create some kind of change— but is it enough? Is it truly the change we’re actually seeking? 

You kind of just have to believe it is. Call it faith or love, we choose what matters and we choose which uncertainties to ignore.

Well I choose to believe. Believe that I’m not too distant. That I can, and have, and do connect with others — every day. 

I think what matters is the actual, the physical — though you might rightly critique me for being unspecific. If you’ve been following along this is only ever what the answer could be, for there is nothing else besides the tangible.

But these moments we share with others are what matter. These physical interactions, that light up the universe for but a moment. And though they may become distant to us — forever faraway in spacetime — I still think they matter.

And though they are now far away from me, and though it is no longer me who lived through them — in that annoying sense the philosophers mean — they are still valuable to me. They still give warmth to me when I float away this world and into the one within my mind. And while they’re no longer here — the people and the memories — I choose to believe.

Believe that they were important — are important.

And I will continue to pursue that closeness, even if it creates a different kind of

Distance