Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

How does one measure the space a person inhabits? How can one be sure of how much or how little one takes? And what is the best way to maneuver given one’s perceived size and status?

The same can be said of a relationship or a job. If the present (or envisioned, imagined, predicted future) appears low on fuel—as it does, for example, at my increasingly shitty job—memories of a vibrant past can act as reserve energy, propelling one forward on the same path. The beginning has that special power. But if weak, it can also eliminate any possibility of a future.

Have I made myself this accommodating? A harmless vessel for their confusion and rage? They must see me as soft and small and unthreatening, because I have never suggested otherwise.

What greater loneliness and longing is there than living with someone you once knew so well, and who is now hardly around?

It is the nature of relationships that they are impossible to fully understand from the outside, their inner workings built both from memories and habits and histories made up from the exterior world, and from those known only between the two involved, that exist only through them and are lost when they are lost to each other. A relationship is particular in the way people are particular. Whatever lessons one can glean from other people’s relationships can only be taken in pieces, assembled into bare, minimal instructions.