when things change.

I am self admittedly a lover of all things change.

I love fall. Not only because of the much needed relief from Indiana humidity that pastes the very wind to my skin like a wet suit. But because I get to watch leaves change brilliant and unashamed colors of red, gold, yellow and orange. I get to watch trees transform and shed for the coming winter months.

I usually get antsy about once every three months. Antsy for something to be different. This will often result in a hastily made hair dye decision. Or disaster. Take your pick. Or it involves rearranging the furniture. Or starting a craft (usually never finishing it).

I take long drives, and usually end up creating new ways home just so I don't feel so stuck. Sometimes I purposefully miss my house just to keep driving and feel like I am doing something different.

I always try to find new places to eat, drink, and be merry. You know, the usual cliche.

I get bored easily, especially with routine. Mundane, normal life. Details. Schedules. These all make my eyelids want to pick up a match and set themselves on fire. If they had hands, I am convinced that somedays they would actually do this. Fortunately for my eye balls, as well as the rest of my body, they do not.

I can always be depended on to change the plan. To live in spontaneous land, ruled by feelings and whims. Some call it flaky, I call it life.

But recently I have began to see that as much as I live and thrive in the chaos of indecisive whimness (yup, just made it a word)...there is one place that picks at my very heart when it comes to change. One place that takes every ounce of flexibility, understanding, love and patience. Things that usually come natural, but in this one place are more rare than unicorns.

I never. Ever. Know what to do as people change.

Weird, right? Alien life form weird. Talk about a punch in my brains face. I, the queen of cool, the master of go with the flow, the ruler of the land of indecisive and change. I, the least likely to have a plan, the most likely to wing it and rebound in flying colors. The best on the spot decision maker and non-regretter. I don't know how to live while the people around me change.

I wish I could say I am all calm and supportive and positive. That I root for it, encourage it and love it. That I celebrate it with every turn. That I want to write songs to it and make it a cute hat for christmas.

But I hate when change comes knocking on my door in the form of people I love.

I suddenly get awkward. I lose all social skills. I revert to the verbal competency of a four year old and can't find my way out of my own shell-shocked brain. Ridiculous. People change. They should. It is beautiful and good and lovely and healthy. I know this, because it has been for me. But...I can't ever get to this place with other people.

I want to hold on so badly to memories. To special moments and inside jokes. I want to take the love, the fun, the bond, the timely words, the connection of souls, the conversations, and just bottle them up in a Ziploc to carry with me permanently. I want to freeze time on friendships as badly as I wish I didn't know Katie Perry exists. And that is an intense wanting.

This realization struck me as so freaky that I tried, for a long time, to fix the part of my brain that wasn't quite up to speed with the rest of the wheels making it work. I tried to be able to come and go like other people. To be a constantly open or revolving door. To let people come in when the time was right...and to let the relationship revolve into something different and equally as beautiful when the time was right.

I think my revolving door just keeps getting stuck. Or maybe I keep sticking a rock in it just big enough to stop it from moving all together. Then the people inside freak, feel incredibly uncomfortable and suffocated, and at the first sign of freedom run screaming.

I hold on too tightly to security in friendships. I hold to tightly to "how things are". When you grow up like me, sometimes you begin to feel like you can't count on anyone. You begin to feel like everyone who is supposed to hold you will let you fall, but not just sometimes and on accident; all the time on purpose. Life can't be summed up with contrite phrases like "no one is perfect and everyone will fail you." Mostly because that translates as "sometimes people mess up." True, but for me, it felt comparatively bigger than that. Like every single moment of my life was ruled by this failure.

I'm not saying this as an emo tastic feel bad for me, I want attention, woe is me, my life is awful thing. To be honest, my life is cake and gummy bears compared to a lot of other people.  I just think I finally understand why my crazy brain can't let people change.

When I found people who I let in. Whom I began to trust with all of me.  I found others who I would let hold pieces of me at a time, and with tightly held breath, I waited and waited for the pain of rejection to come. It didn't. And thus began the creation of a new kind of family in my heart. I have held tightly to this ever since, my heart begging for the home it found in the souls of others I have come to know and love so, incredibly much.

But I hold a little to tightly. I lean a little to hard. I squeeze a little to much. Like a helicopter parent, I hover and need and beg for others to call me family, too. To need friendship like I do. And I know I am trying to rest in all the wrong places.

My heart is big and full and dying to love way too much. But when people change, I get so scared. I get scared that I ruined everything. I get scared that the link in our souls has been broken, irreparably. I get scared that I am going to fall down again...just like before. And  I quickly snatch everything I gave them right back into the deadbolt safe around my heart and lock it fast, before anymore love or truth can escape.

It is no one's fault but mine. No one deserves my crazy idea of friendship and neediness to gnaw on their lives all day.

So...in all my love of change, the one constant that is like crack to me is people. It isn't fair to anyone, not even me. But I am just trying to love with  my hands open and my heart off of lock down.

I am not there yet. I don't know if I will ever arrive. But this year, I am going to try and let the fall teach  me a thing or two about the beauty, not the fear, of change. Change in the things nearest and dearest to our hearts.