Te Hecho De Menos
Miss v. to feel the lack or loss of.
When I was 14 I went off to prep school, sent by the Abert G. Oliver Program, which recruited "gifted" African-American and Latino junior high kids to send them to places like Andover and Brooklyn Friends school and Westtown. I went to George School, a Friends boarding school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
The summer before I left I got in trouble several times with my family, because when family friends and other relatives would ask me if I was going to miss my mom or my siblings when I was gone I would truthfully answer, "No." The truth was I was eager as hell to get out of the Red Hook Projects, where I moved from Sunset Park when I was 12, and I was eager to get out of the reach of my often over-protective mother and older sister. My brother had moved out of house when I was 11 (being 8 years my senior), so I wasn't gonna miss him - In fact, at that point I had little or no experience in missing anyone or anything - except maybe Samson, the family dog, which was technically my brother's dog, so had gone with him when he moved away after joining the Air Force.
What is missing someone? I mean, the term covers a broad range of intensity of feeling, so when does it rank low on the miss-o-meter, and when does it rise up into the dangerous red zone of obsession?
I remember thinking I would miss my close friends from Brooklyn. Shit, I remember me and my friend Keith sobbing at my Junior High graduation, certain we would never see each other again, knowing that people always say they'll stay in touch, but then never do. And to some degree that was true. We stayed touch for the first couple of years - but then poof! But even during that time when it became less and less often of an event to hang out I never missed him. I had lots of distractions in high school, and I had the the world of privileged white teen-agers to grow accustomed to and learn about. I think that was when my interest in anthropology first developed (even though I didn't know to call it that yet), but I was always categorizing and describing behaviors and customs in high school, comparing not only the differences between these kids in prep school to those in NYC public school, but breaking the school up into its sub-cultures - though there was much more overlap and interaction in a small little liberal quaker school of 500 students than in the chaotic thousands in a NYC high school.
And I certainly did not miss my friends from that high school while I was home for break. I had distractions then, too. . . People I connected with a lot better anyway - other minority kids who had been sent to prep schools as well (see this entry), but when I was at school I did not miss them.
My first real experience with missing someone to a point where there was a nearly constant reminder of their absence was during the winter break of my freshman year in college. The girlfriend I had at the time. We had spent nearly every single day together since we had met and then started going out a few weeks later during our first semester. I did not have a girlfriend all through high school. I had to make do with the occasional hook-up and the awkward making out and fondling during games of truth or dare, or acceptable public humping on the dance floor - so Kate was my first real girlfriend since 8th grade. So, my college which had its break from the day before Thanksgiving until the day after New Year's. It only took about three days of being in Brooklyn to be overwhelmed with the feeling of missing her. I could not find a job, I had no money and most of my local friends did not have that kind of crazy long break - so I did not really get to see them. So, I was stuck at home most of the time and my mother was driving me crazy. I always got the impression she severely disappointed in the person I was turning out to be because of that liberal education.
So, I did what I always do when I need something to do: I wrote a hell of a lot and I read a hell of a lot. I wrote Kate a ton of letters. In that time she sent me one (maybe two - no, I think it was one). And I called her a bunch of times (she was from Oneonta, which might as well have been the moon), but I don't think she ever called me. You see, she had a lot of distractions and things to keep her occupied while she was back home. There was little room in her awareness to be too aware of my absence - while my lacking her around was basically all I had to think about. Which is to say, upon reflection, that my missing her so desperately had more to do with me and my situation than it really had to do with her or even my feelings for her. At least, that is the way it seems to me now - back then for me, it meant that I had a deeper commitment to our relationship than she did - and when we got back to school I broke up with her.
So is missing someone merely a result of a combination of variables of how used you are to being around them and how much you care for them during that time versus how much you have to occupy your time and thoughts and how pleasurable it might be, with an added variable that can lead to more or less of that missing feeling - which is how difficult or easy it is to get to communicate with that person while you are apart - because, as we all know Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but also Out of sight, out of mind.
I spent the summer after freshman year in San Diego and during that time I was going out with Anne. I turned 19 that summer. She turned 20 in June. And I missed her. . . like a crazy ache in my chest and a rubberiness in my legs that made them bounce ceaselessly when I tried to sleep - and tried was the operative word - because I remember many sleepless nights just lying there in an adolescent haze of desperation and physical illness. All my journal entries from that summer go on and on about it. Of course, a good amount of that anxiety was that she'd meet someone else because I was unable to feel secure about such things back then - and on reflection I think that fear was just a projection of my own capabilities to be disloyal - I just didn't know it yet - but I would learn it once I got back to college (and she had transferred, so we only had more time apart to look forward to). I wrote a shit-ton of letters to her that summer. The only time I can think of that I was not overwhelmed by the sense of lack was when I was riding my bike 12 miles to work everyday.
She came out to Cali that summer to visit and allow me to lay my burden aside for a week, but I remember the day she left in her grandpa's mini-van back up to L.A. to pick up her friend and then head back to Indiana I was so miserable I did not go to work - but lay in bed half-asleep. . . unable to go on living. . . I know, sad, pathetic. . .
And once I was back in college, as I have implied, while I still missed her, there was plenty to distract me from that fact - so I could go through my days accomplishing other things - whether it was partying or meeting new people or avoiding (with increasing difficulty) women that wanted to fuck me. It is a strange thing, because our visits with each other rather than relieving that feeling, only served to remind me of how much it was possible to miss someone and feel miserable about it.
Years later, when apart from girlfriends for weeks or months at a time the sensation of missing someone was much easier to deal with. It was not so much a pang, but the echo of a pang. Maybe that is just maturity. . . I mean, it wasn't as if there weren't moments or even a day that I did not just feel down about being apart from my beloved, and it would affect my mood - but not my ability to accomplish anything - and rarely, if ever, did the weight seem to threaten to crush me.
But I don't remember the last time I missed someone, that I felt their absence so profoundly it had a palable affect on the quality of my life. Maybe I am better at distracting myself. . . .Or maybe I just don't feel as deeply as I once did. . . Or maybe the feeling is the same and my reaction to it is different. . . But whatever is, the idea of missing someone still bugs me out - that another human being (or heck, a dog or a cat or a bird, or a TV show or whatever) can be so much a part of your life and environment, or your desired life and environment, that their absence actually changes the experiencing of it. . .
When I was 14 I went off to prep school, sent by the Abert G. Oliver Program, which recruited "gifted" African-American and Latino junior high kids to send them to places like Andover and Brooklyn Friends school and Westtown. I went to George School, a Friends boarding school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
The summer before I left I got in trouble several times with my family, because when family friends and other relatives would ask me if I was going to miss my mom or my siblings when I was gone I would truthfully answer, "No." The truth was I was eager as hell to get out of the Red Hook Projects, where I moved from Sunset Park when I was 12, and I was eager to get out of the reach of my often over-protective mother and older sister. My brother had moved out of house when I was 11 (being 8 years my senior), so I wasn't gonna miss him - In fact, at that point I had little or no experience in missing anyone or anything - except maybe Samson, the family dog, which was technically my brother's dog, so had gone with him when he moved away after joining the Air Force.
What is missing someone? I mean, the term covers a broad range of intensity of feeling, so when does it rank low on the miss-o-meter, and when does it rise up into the dangerous red zone of obsession?
I remember thinking I would miss my close friends from Brooklyn. Shit, I remember me and my friend Keith sobbing at my Junior High graduation, certain we would never see each other again, knowing that people always say they'll stay in touch, but then never do. And to some degree that was true. We stayed touch for the first couple of years - but then poof! But even during that time when it became less and less often of an event to hang out I never missed him. I had lots of distractions in high school, and I had the the world of privileged white teen-agers to grow accustomed to and learn about. I think that was when my interest in anthropology first developed (even though I didn't know to call it that yet), but I was always categorizing and describing behaviors and customs in high school, comparing not only the differences between these kids in prep school to those in NYC public school, but breaking the school up into its sub-cultures - though there was much more overlap and interaction in a small little liberal quaker school of 500 students than in the chaotic thousands in a NYC high school.
And I certainly did not miss my friends from that high school while I was home for break. I had distractions then, too. . . People I connected with a lot better anyway - other minority kids who had been sent to prep schools as well (see this entry), but when I was at school I did not miss them.
My first real experience with missing someone to a point where there was a nearly constant reminder of their absence was during the winter break of my freshman year in college. The girlfriend I had at the time. We had spent nearly every single day together since we had met and then started going out a few weeks later during our first semester. I did not have a girlfriend all through high school. I had to make do with the occasional hook-up and the awkward making out and fondling during games of truth or dare, or acceptable public humping on the dance floor - so Kate was my first real girlfriend since 8th grade. So, my college which had its break from the day before Thanksgiving until the day after New Year's. It only took about three days of being in Brooklyn to be overwhelmed with the feeling of missing her. I could not find a job, I had no money and most of my local friends did not have that kind of crazy long break - so I did not really get to see them. So, I was stuck at home most of the time and my mother was driving me crazy. I always got the impression she severely disappointed in the person I was turning out to be because of that liberal education.
So, I did what I always do when I need something to do: I wrote a hell of a lot and I read a hell of a lot. I wrote Kate a ton of letters. In that time she sent me one (maybe two - no, I think it was one). And I called her a bunch of times (she was from Oneonta, which might as well have been the moon), but I don't think she ever called me. You see, she had a lot of distractions and things to keep her occupied while she was back home. There was little room in her awareness to be too aware of my absence - while my lacking her around was basically all I had to think about. Which is to say, upon reflection, that my missing her so desperately had more to do with me and my situation than it really had to do with her or even my feelings for her. At least, that is the way it seems to me now - back then for me, it meant that I had a deeper commitment to our relationship than she did - and when we got back to school I broke up with her.
So is missing someone merely a result of a combination of variables of how used you are to being around them and how much you care for them during that time versus how much you have to occupy your time and thoughts and how pleasurable it might be, with an added variable that can lead to more or less of that missing feeling - which is how difficult or easy it is to get to communicate with that person while you are apart - because, as we all know Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but also Out of sight, out of mind.
I spent the summer after freshman year in San Diego and during that time I was going out with Anne. I turned 19 that summer. She turned 20 in June. And I missed her. . . like a crazy ache in my chest and a rubberiness in my legs that made them bounce ceaselessly when I tried to sleep - and tried was the operative word - because I remember many sleepless nights just lying there in an adolescent haze of desperation and physical illness. All my journal entries from that summer go on and on about it. Of course, a good amount of that anxiety was that she'd meet someone else because I was unable to feel secure about such things back then - and on reflection I think that fear was just a projection of my own capabilities to be disloyal - I just didn't know it yet - but I would learn it once I got back to college (and she had transferred, so we only had more time apart to look forward to). I wrote a shit-ton of letters to her that summer. The only time I can think of that I was not overwhelmed by the sense of lack was when I was riding my bike 12 miles to work everyday.
She came out to Cali that summer to visit and allow me to lay my burden aside for a week, but I remember the day she left in her grandpa's mini-van back up to L.A. to pick up her friend and then head back to Indiana I was so miserable I did not go to work - but lay in bed half-asleep. . . unable to go on living. . . I know, sad, pathetic. . .
And once I was back in college, as I have implied, while I still missed her, there was plenty to distract me from that fact - so I could go through my days accomplishing other things - whether it was partying or meeting new people or avoiding (with increasing difficulty) women that wanted to fuck me. It is a strange thing, because our visits with each other rather than relieving that feeling, only served to remind me of how much it was possible to miss someone and feel miserable about it.
Years later, when apart from girlfriends for weeks or months at a time the sensation of missing someone was much easier to deal with. It was not so much a pang, but the echo of a pang. Maybe that is just maturity. . . I mean, it wasn't as if there weren't moments or even a day that I did not just feel down about being apart from my beloved, and it would affect my mood - but not my ability to accomplish anything - and rarely, if ever, did the weight seem to threaten to crush me.
But I don't remember the last time I missed someone, that I felt their absence so profoundly it had a palable affect on the quality of my life. Maybe I am better at distracting myself. . . .Or maybe I just don't feel as deeply as I once did. . . Or maybe the feeling is the same and my reaction to it is different. . . But whatever is, the idea of missing someone still bugs me out - that another human being (or heck, a dog or a cat or a bird, or a TV show or whatever) can be so much a part of your life and environment, or your desired life and environment, that their absence actually changes the experiencing of it. . .