I realized a while ago that most of the kids I’m friends with are people who, if I were to meet anew now, I probably wouldn’t befriend. That was a pretty strange and shocking revelation. Like understanding that I wouldn’t love my parents if they didn’t raise me or something. Which, uh, we all know is definitely not true.

But what set me off even more than that epiphany was my next conclusion. Which told me something I didn’t quite like – longevity of a relationship matters.

I was really very bothered by this.

I mean, how dumb is that? This is why even couples that don’t work often “make it work” because time has been following them along like a never-ending, winding serpentine tail for years. This is why old friends feel bad giving each other up, even if they feel a tantamount sense of relief at the good riddance. It’s probably due to a couple of factors, really. For one, there’s the idea that you’re leaving the segment of yourself that’s attached to said person behind. And we all know people don’t enjoy estranging themselves from themselves – even though the majority of us do it all the time.

But another thing is probably that we feel that we are vagrants. People like a sense of eventual consistency, tradition, and settlement. And the inability to maintain a lengthy relationship seems to signal an ineptitude on our part. But even more agitating is that itching, sickening sensation that maybe we’ll never get/keep it together. Why do we keep messing up? Why is always next time? Why always tomorrow? Whoever said that even worked out for Scarlet O’ Hara?

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. So it really unnerved me that longevity mattered in relationships. I mean, what a completely arbitrary factor! Like, you’d be more likely to keep someone you knew for longer than shorter if a fight occurred. Because a brief period of time spent, conversely, gives people a feeling of temporariness, which is also, paradoxically enough, a sort of safety. Brevity and longevity both make us feel safer – how strange. It’s the in-between, probably, that trips us all up. The gray area, the period that we can’t classify, that doesn’t fall neatly between the bold lines of a chart or box or whatever.

But even with this rationale behind me, I still felt unsettled. I felt like every passing moment with a friend meant another footfall along the path to inextricable and messy relationships.

However, there’s really nothing to do about it. Except maybe acknowledge that this mindset exists. I mean, relationships shouldn’t be reversed, or halted, or sped up, or anything really. They should just go. Maybe the caveat should exist that longevity will matter, but that it shouldn’t?

Or is it futile? Will we fall into time’s funny trap no matter what?