Dear You:

Look at it this way: People have preconceived notions about the world and things and relationships. These notions are based on what we’ve experienced. All our lives up to this point are spent cataloging changes in the world and mapping them out into a pattern. How we act is based largely upon these patterns. When something changes, we make a note of it and modify how we react in order to compensate for said change. Change leads to reaction leads to change et cetera. This is not to say that we are a pattern, just that we have a reference book for this sort of thing.

The only real change that is worth our changing our pattern occurs solely in the realm of human interaction. How we act (or react, rather) is based on the patterns that we have mapped out. Those patterns are based on changes in the relations between ourselves and other people. Simply: we are constantly re-evaluating our place in the world based on our relations to other people.

Among these changes in relations, there is only one that really counts. It counts because it doesn’t have anything to do with your relations to others; it happens only to you and no one else. It has no stimulus, and no cause. You don’t notice it when it happens because your brain automatically compensates and it’s like it never happened. Not only is your pattern updated to adapt to this new change, your pattern is restructured around this new change.

The change is this: you are someone different from who you were before. This is often devastating because you don’t realize it, and suddenly the world is a house in which you have not lived. So you go exploring. You pull on your pants and run your fingers back through your hair and go out, looking for someone who recognizes you. Then you can ask them to explain things to you, slowly, and with a reassuring pat on the hand every now and then.