Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't change time" - David Bowie
Changes, not seasons or the color of the leaves on trees. People change, sometimes right before our eyes. Some of that change is good. We watch our children grow. We stand by and watch them struggle through adolesence and become adults. Friends come and go, and if we are lucky, they come back into our lives again. We can't explain why we move in and out of each others lives, it just happens. I have been blessed to have so many good people come in and out of my life. While that doesn't make the changes any easier, it is a relief to know it happens to us all. People coming into our lives is always better than people leaving.
Most bothering (to me, anyway) is watching those closest to us changing. You think things are one way, but deep inside you know they are not. There is a hope that you are wrong. Instinctively you know differently. That a relationship can be altered to the point that you don't recognize the other person or their thoughts is devastating. That a lifetime of being all of a sudden isn't. Can you fight it? Not successfully. The tighter you hold on, the more that slips through your hands. I have had loved ones say things during heated discussions, then later apologize, saying, "I didn't mean that, I was mad when I said it." My thoughts on that are, that when we are angry, the filters get turned off and we say exactly what we mean.
I suppose that what can be done is to change our thinking also. Perhaps the relationship can survive, but on altered terms. We don't necessarily need to verbalize this, but we can see the changes and adapt to them. Then again, we entered the relationship under certain unspoken terms...common interests, job, whatever. To have those terms altered, well, you changed, not me. I want you back the way you were!