Change

     Today, Leslie (my teaching partner and right hand woman) and I were working with a group of 5th graders who didn't pass reading TAKS. We were doing a lesson on character analysis and we were talking about how the characters change from the beginning of the story to the end of the story, which got me thinking about the broader implications of character analysis beyond fictional stories.
     As human beings, we generally have a hard time with change. Even if the change is desired or bring about more favorable circumstances, it still can be hard to deal with or take some getting used to. I am no exception to this rule. I think that I adapt pretty well to change, but that doesn't mean I always like it.
    For me, the most difficult changes to accept are the changes in relationships of all kinds, or the changes in people that then necessitate a change in the relationship. I think these changes are the most difficult to deal with because they are often the most unexpected. You're going about life, minding your business and then "WHAM" you get broadsided by a change that leaves you completely dumbfounded, wondering how you got there.
    As someone who has worked hard to not let her past dictate who she will become in the future, I can certainly appreciate that growth can bring about change! Thank goodness I am not the girl I was in High School! I have worked very hard to battle against destructive patterns and habits that are not healthy- physically or emotionally.  
     But I wonder- can a person change so drastically that you don't even recognize them? (I'm not talking about physical changes like dying your hair or losing 200 lbs) Or is the perceived change not really a change at all, but a reflection of a person's true character that you overlooked? Do we see what we want to see when it comes to other people and then are left feeling adrift when the rose colored glasses come off?
    6 months ago, I walked away from a 4 year romantic relationship. I still know it was the right decision, but as I go over the pieces and try to figure out what went wrong, I keep coming back to this idea of change. In the beginning of our relationship this guy was the ultimate pursuer/wooer. For the first 10 months, we lived 1,500 miles apart. He had the much more flexible work schedule, so he flew out to see me every 3 weeks. We would have these incredible weekends hanging out with each other or my friends and family. We would go to church together and despite his previous misgivings about religion and church, he would participate in the service and we would have some deep conversations about spirituality. Before I moved to Houston to be with him, He did a whole bunch of research on school districts that I should apply to and even visited several Lutheran churches and found one downtown that we could attend together. When I moved down here, there was definitely an adjustment period of learning to live in close proximity, but we both still tried really hard to make the relationship work. I changed my eating habits to accommodate more whole grains and vegetables (two of his favorite things); I even started cooking with flax seed! He slowly changed his work habits to work less/come home at a reasonable hour. Things were going pretty well, or so I thought. Then he stopped coming to church with me, he stopped wooing and pursuing me.  He stopped doing things that we had always enjoyed doing together. I tried to get him to acknowledge these changes and explain them, but he couldn't (verbal communication was not his strong suit- at least not in relationship matters). So then I stopped trying too because every time I put in an effort to change things (to make them better) he would not respond, acknowledge or reciprocate. The point of this story is not to assign him all the blame because I know there are mistakes that we both made and I certainly had my fair share of wrong turns. Yes, there were some red flags about the relationship that were always there that I ignored/chose not to see, but in general, I am completely dumbfounded when I think about the person that I met back in October 2006 and the utterly different person who I broke up with in November 2010.
I don't think I will ever get answers for the root cause of the 180 degree change in behavior or even some of the symptoms of it, which I guess confirms that we weren't meant to be, but it doesn't make the change any easier to swallow.