When I was young, I frequently participated in various evolutions of the game, tag. In one version, if you were “tagged” you had to remain frozen in your present location until one of your teammates left the safety of “base” and rescued you with a counter “tag” while attempting to resist being frozen him or herself.
As is the way with children, if you were well liked you could count on being “rescued”, but if not you would spend most of recess mired in inertia.
It’s different when you get older, yet similarities remain. In some ways, I am still frozen, perceptively confined to the body of my eleven year old self. The one with the pubescent attitude problem, whose favorite food was french fries, and thought John Hughes was the greatest director/screenwriter whoever lived.
All of those things have changed, yet it seems to matter little as I am still frozen in time in the minds of adults who knew me then, which is to say people who barely know me now. Regardless of what I read, how my taste changes or even how I perfunctorily attempt to set aside their misconceptions, they aren’t terribly interested in changes, because changes require rewiring memory, which is more difficult than regurgitating the past.
Consequently, I am lazy of exerting myself in these relationships. I grow less interested in listening, making me as lacking in communication as those I complain about. Because, the interest of a single party does not a relationship create.
This is just one of the ways life changes. I am frozen in time as a shadow of my former self. In some ways it is easier, allowing people their misconceptions. WIth their misguided impressions you know where you stand, whereas with the current truth of yourself, there is always hidden judgement, making approval simultaneously not matter, and be absolutely everything.
There comes a place in “frozen” relationships when it becomes impossible to re-program the other person’s idea of who you are, saddling you with a tremendous amount of frustration, or resignation, neither of which is desirable.
