“You cannot make anyone care for you if they do not want to,” she said to the other young woman with her.
We were on the evening walk around the Eddie Hart Savannah. I was on lap three, the power walk, when I came upon this conversation. I was not eavesdropping. I was just in close proximity to the duo and overheard the earnest pleading of the one on the left, the smaller in stature of the two.
“You cannot force people to like you. You can’t make anybody want to be with if they do not want to be with you. You understand what I am saying?” she continued with the deepest conviction and sustained admonitions, telling her buddy how she thought she should approach “the relationship.”
I couldn’t tell what kind of relationship. I was not interested. It really was not my business but the youthfulness of the voice and body giving that advice resonated with me. By this time I am upon them and, in an atypical move, I engaged them.
Here I was swimming in the pain those very philosophies have caused me because regrettably, as yet, I have not fully accepted that people only stay if they want/choose to do so. As I walked, hot tears already having sprung on the quiet bend on the eastern corner, before I caught up with these two, I am thinking that I live an isolated life but there are a few people I wish who cared (or cares) sufficiently to rally with me on this journey.
How many prayers are in my crucible on this matter! A girlfriend here, a sibling there, a child, a man—my thoughts would go back to how easy it is for people to “leave me alone.” Of course, the other side is that I have fenced myself to not readily invite too many people in because, for me, sustaining interpersonal interactions has become extremely difficult.
My moods/feelings/emotions change from time to time, and without warning or reason, so I am privately discomfited to take people on that journey, both family and friends. If I find in someone the willingness to manage their interactions with my turns of the tides, I quite easily become open and participatory in that engagement. But often, it does not last. People get tired of your moodiness. They do not understand it. They cannot separate you from the thing that occurs with/within you.
I have a friend of over 20 years, who, for over ten years would call me every day, up to five times in a day. That, for me, became a staple, stable space because we shared all our light and momentary troubles and became sisters who spoke openly about anything—even the dark and embarrassing things in our life. We would laugh at each other’s “misfortunes.”
One day, her circumstances changed. More people came into her life and at first I excused away her absence with the understanding that there would be an adjustment period. I would call from time to time and in the new scenario I ended up leaving messages. When calls were not returned regularly enough, I realised that the relationship as I knew it had ended.
No disagreements, no issue, nothing. Just a moving on to deal with her life and possibly never a cursory moment to think, given my special circumstances, how/if I am affected.
“You cannot make anyone stay with you if they don’t want to,” said the young lady. My curiosity got the better of me. I took their pace, asked for an excuse, apologised for acting on an overheard conversation, and asked the advisor her age.
She’s 15! So of course I asked her if she really believed what she was saying. She confidently answered in the affirmative. I commended her, suggesting too, that she should say it to all the people around her, as many people as possible, because at three times her age and then some, I was only now learning the lesson.
It’s a hard teaching.
Caroline C Ravello is a strategic communications and media practitioner with over 30 years of proficiency. She holds an MA in Mass Communications and is pursuing the MSc in Public Health (MPH) from The UWI. Write to: mindful.tt@gmail.com
