Everything seemingly has a pattern. Right before it storms, the angry clouds roll in and a dark curtain is strung across the sky. The rain then begins to pour and soon to follow are the bright lightning streaks with the booming clap of thunder. When you tie your shoe, you cinch the laces up tight and then you cross them over one another, what follows is either bunny ears or in the rabbit hole, yet it is still a pattern. The only thing that seems to not fit these type of endless repetitive cycles are people, and when the pattern of a person breaks, this is where we seem to take it the hardest.

Your life comes in phases or rather seasons. In the fall, right after summer and things begin to sink into place once again, as school and jobs pick back up into the rhythm, you'll meet new faces. Some of these people, the majority of these people, will be just that: faces. However, one or two of these new beings will hang around. You will get coffee or lunch more than a couple times in a week. You'll develop your own jokes and begin to learn this person, who they are, how they act, the things that make them quirky. It will hit you like a hurricane, this friendship, and you'll cling to it like your life depends on it. Why do we do this? I'm not sure, not really, but I feel it has to do with the human tendency of avoiding anything that requires you to be alone.

It's when winter comes, when the pressure of school weighs on your shoulders and break is teasing you with a glimpse around every corner, that you will begin to outgrow this person. Because you have wrapped so much of your time around them, when things get real and fast, you don't have time to entertain a still fairly new face. They no longer fit into your pattern of life. Break will come, and you'll make empty promises of seeing each other every week, and that week will stumble in front of you but you won't be able to put your finger on what's missing, so you will move along. It isn't on purpose, I don't think, it's just the phase in which your heart has settled into, the season of where you are.

Spring will stroll on in and things will seem to pick up along the lines of a Fall pattern. You'll rekindle that dwindling flame, maybe even pick up a new one down the way. You'll find your groove again, the rhythm of a new friendship still fresh on the path. Things will shift throughout this season. You may be challenged in this new friendship, the way a newly wed couple faces their first full out brawl. Things could go very wrong very quickly for this is un-chartered territory and you've never seen each other in this lighting. Things could also go very well, and when it's all said and done you'll be even closer than in the beginning. It's in spring that things that were once foggy become unveiled.

Summer is where things get tricky. You have the ability to make time for one another or for these people depending on how many you accumulated throughout the year. It's a matter of choice, and that's scary. You can choose to put an effort and you can choose to let it wilt like a flower in the shade of a sunless winter. Whatever you choose, whatever pattern or cycle you decide to maintain or break, it's of your own doing. And that's something possibly more terrifying than anything else we have to face.

The way in which people move in and out of our lives isn't meaningless, there is a reason behind the seemingly chaotic movement. Sometimes they come into our lives to teach us something. Sometimes they're there to help us through something, and sometimes they come along just for the sake of companionship. No matter the purpose, we as humans have a tendency toward attachment, and while it can be at times unfortunate, it helps mold us into the thing that separates us from animals. People will come and go, some a trickling stream that just ripple across your heart, others a brick wall that slams a hole into your chest, the pieces taken with the blow. And while it seems like a pointless cycle because their is no constant pattern and we crave consistency, this merciless rotation provides us with a way back to ourselves, a way to reflect on what really matters, and we all need that kind of reminder every once in awhile. It's in these critical moments of being alone that we find the pattern within ourselves and discover who we are when the storm has stilled and all that's remained standing is yourself. What will you do when the waters are quiet and the world is listening? Can you be your own, independent person? Or will you be peeping around the edge, searching for the next person to come down the road?