A thing about me is, if I believe something will only be available for a short time, that is a sure-fire way to make certain I do NOT try it.

Maybe this is because I do not know how to enjoy things I know are going to be gone soon. The sadness that it’s going to be gone is always stronger than the enjoyment.

People have tried to teach me how to let go of that thought long enough to enjoy something, but it has never worked for me. If I have delicious food in my mouth, and I turn off all distractions, all thoughts about how this taste won’t last forever, and just focus on how it tastes right now–

Well, I can do that, for a few seconds– but in those seconds, reducing my perception to just the taste, I also somehow lose whatever it was that was making the taste enjoyable. It becomes analysis of sensation, which breaks the sensation down and destroys it.

Thinking about how I’ll still have the memories of a good experience afterwards, also doesn’t help. Because my sensory memory (sight, taste, touch, smell, sound, everything) is always so vague afterwards, reducing the experience to factual data ABOUT what it was like.

So for example after I eat the most delicious milkshake I’ve ever tried…. I will only be able to remember that I loved it, and maybe a few comparisons to other things it tasted like a little bit. So I know I can never get even slightly close to how much I enjoyed it just by remembering it.

And so if the milkshake is only available For A Limited Time, I’d rather not try it. Because I know afterwards I’ll have nothing but the information that I ate something I loved and can never have again.

And also… if the experience does have benefits to me that are clear enough to be stored in my factual data– that’s just going to make it harder for me to cope when it goes away.

Like if my work says “employees aren’t technically allowed to sit on chairs, even during a 10-hour overnight shift. But it’s not enforced, you can sit as long as you put the chair back before the day shift manager comes in”

…then I will try very, very hard to get through my shifts without sitting, as much as possible. Because that feels like something that could be taken away from me at any time. So I feel it would be dangerous to get used to it.

And I’m not saying this is a healthy mindset, because it isn’t. It’s the kind of mindset that ultimately leads to, “don’t even try to enjoy or benefit from anything ever, because everything is temporary in the great scheme of things.”

But when real life repeatedly, provably DOES take things away from me… and repeatedly, provably DOES leave me with either a dependency on something that isn’t there anymore, or a vague sense of missing something that I loved and can never have again…

…then I don’t know what else I can do, besides try very hard to focus my love on the things that’ll last the longest, and try very hard to MAKE as many good things keep existing as I possibly can.