My love is an anomoly, an outlier amongst the data collected from other relationships in my life. The latter begin and end and begin and end again. A small few leave impressions, molding me into who I am, but it seems almost as if that was there purpose. They are enzymatic – attaching, changing my form and structure, making something happen – and then gone, physically undetectable in the product produced, but affective all the same.
During my thesis defense, the faculty ask about the outliers in my data and the point is made that until one gathers a critical amount of information, i.e. power, one can’t be sure if the outlier(s) observed might actually be the norm. What is the critical amount of experience from relationships one must gather before the norm is determined?
If my friendships were plotted on a graph, relationships on the X-axis and time on the Y, the line of regression would fall through a nice cluster of points, all on the too short end of time. But one point would stand out, one alone, representing the one relationship that brings change to me and sticks around to see and live with the outcome. It represents the one I am wedded to.
Close friendships are few and far between, and their value is immeasurable, really. I would trade them for nothing, regardless of the pain that inevitably comes when they run their course, when change comes, and when time and distance produce fewer and fewer shared experiences. They fade in the present, but never in memory.
And how fortunate am I to have both those memories and a love that stays.
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