Assume Nothing

How much can we ever really know another person?

I've been wondering about this lately. A close friend of mine recently broke up with her boyfriend. They've had a rough year, lots of ups and downs, and have been living in her parent's house. Probably not a great living arrangement for building a successful relationship (although it is arguably a pretty good one for a crappy sitcom) but not necessarily a reason to sound the death knell, either, given it was supposed to be a temporary thing. So my friend wasn't all that surprised when her boyfriend started spending more time out of the house.
Who wouldn't need space in this instance?

Still, it seemed to be getting more frequent, and naturally she suspected something fishy was going on when he disappeared for longer than usual without calling her or returning her calls. It was soon discovered that he was not visiting his parents as he claimed - and that the previous four or five visits to them hadn't happened, either.

"But don't worry," the absentee boyfriend's father told my anxious friend after delivering this shocking news, in the false belief he was being soothing. "He disappears like this all the time. He'll be back."

Oh?

After nearly three days had passed without word, my friend starting packing the boyfriend's shit. And discovered an interesting piece of paper. It seemed her now-ex boyfriend had once been charged with soliciting a prostitute. Who, unfortunately for him, had turned out to be one of our city's finest. Whoops.

My friend was devastated. Not necessarily because of the prostitute, but because the boyfriend hadn't felt he could be honest with her. And, I suspect, because she felt duped. How long could it have gone without her finding out about what had happened? "You think you know someone," she said.

Indeed.

I've been single now for nine months. My six-year relationship ended last June. (On the fifth, actually, but who's counting?) There were a myriad of reasons the relationship needed to end, but one of the reasons was that I felt lost. Like a sponge soaking up spilled wine, the relationship had somehow absorbed me. If you looked closely, you could still me staining the fibres, but I wasn't really there in my true form. I was a smudge of my former self.

My other complaint was that The Ex didn't seem to know me anymore either. Our conversations became stilted. He'd want to talk about things in which I had no interest - and vice versa I'm sure - to the point where I couldn't even reply anymore. I'd just sit there, silent, feeling unable to connect with him. "Doesn't he know me?" I thought. "Shouldn't he know me well enough to find a way to let me into this conversation?"

He couldn't, and eventually, frustrated, I stopped bothering to try to find ways to let him in, too.

I'm still not certain which occurred first: did I get absorbed and disappear and he couldn't find me anymore? Or because he couldn't find me, did I then disappear?

When we stop looking for a person, do they vanish?

I guess it depends on many things. How honest you were with each other in the first place. How much you decide to let another person know you. How much another person decides to let you in. We regulate these connections, keep watch over the comings and goings of potentially risky information. After all, the more of yourself you give away, the more you stand to lose.

For years, I wore a broken watch. I've never really had any luck with watches. They always break on me, or disappear, or simply stop. This particular watch originally belonged to my grandfather, who died when I was four, and so I took some pleasure in having something that had belonged to him on my person at all times. My friends seemed to find my logic strange, but it made sense to me: since every watch I'd ever had simply stopped working, I would just wear one that wasn't ever going to work and I would never have to worry about it stopping.

Besides, it was a nice looking watch, silver, very shiny, simply designed, with a stretchy band you just slipped over your wrist that stretched back closed to fit you, and I like nice things. I have really small wrists, and most men's watches have these huge faces that look ridiculous on me, but this one looked alright.

It was funny, though. You didn't wind it, it was one of those that are powered by the motion of your body or something. I'm a fidgety person, always moving and on the go, so it seemed doubly funny to me that it didn't work. It would work in spurts, though. I'd always set it to midnight (or noon, same thing) but the hands would't remain there. I'd look down one day and notice it was suddenly 12.35.

It became something of a joke with my friends, who would always forget and ask me for the time. And when inevitably a stranger would ask me if I had the time on the subway or in the street, I'd say "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know." Mostly they'd look at me funny, as if I were being rude, and turn away. But once someone wasn't so quick to jump to this conclusion.

"But you're wearing a watch," he said, pointing to my wrist.

"Oh, this?" I said, looking at it. "It doesn't work, actually."

"Oh. Well how come you wear it then?"

"I just like how it looks," I answered, and smiled. "Plus, it belonged to my grandfather, who I never really knew. So there's kinda some sentimental value, I guess."

"Hmm," the guy said. "Well, it's a really nice watch. Have a good day."

"Yeah, thanks," I replied. "You, too."

I realized then that all those people before had thought I was being rude, and that you really can't look at anyone and assume you know what's going on, that you know the whole story. That watch, until it's untimely death in a moving accident, took on a whole new purpose for me after that. It became my daily reminder to assume nothing, ever, even with seemingly obvious clues right there in front of my face.

After all, how much can we ever really know about anyone?