过眼云烟

This is the first time ever I used Chinese as the title of my posts! Hahaha. But I find this idiom very apt for what I am feeling right now. 过眼云烟 basically means 'clouds and smoke passing before one's eyes'. Or to put it more poetically, it means, 'passing cloud, fleeting smoke'. Somehow, the poetic version seems to capture some of the essence of the idiom. What it is trying to convey is a sense of transience, of impermanence.
People always ask me, why I am so closed up and 'mysterious'. I think I know why now. Change happens all the time, be it big or small. I can handle the small changes but not the big ones. When we move on from one station of life to another, we leave behind certain relationships, certain people. No relationship will not change with change. Perhaps that's why I avoid opening up. The more I open up, the more I feel emotional when the relationship changes. The more emotional I feel, the more I want to open up.
You see, opening up requires a certain vulnerability, a certain conceding to the ravages of change. And it's difficult for me to open up precisely because of that. People can say that they will keep in touch, that they will remember you. But in the end, there's no escaping the brutal truth; people do change and there's no stopping that. There's no blame to be attributed to anyone or anything; that's just the way it is.
And that is why I am so guarded, to the point of exasperation to my friends and people around me. Perhaps I should learn to live in the present and enjoy every moment I have rather than to live in the past or even focus at the future. But I can't help it. Somehow, this feeling of '过眼云烟' doesn't strike you until some triggers kick it off.
Ting ting and Jia jia told me yesterday that next semester would likely be the last semester we would have together. Suddenly, everything kicked in. Nothing will be the same again. Time would pass so quickly that the semester would be over before we know it. I started thinking. So many people around are heading to UB in the States to finish up their degree. That leaves a huge, huge gaping hole in school. School would just become that much colder. Friends have a knack of filling up a gap in our lives and yet at the same time, are able to leave a huge vacuum as well. It's the classic push and pull.
So, a thought to leave you all with: Hang on to the good times you have in the present; just not too tight that you can't let go when the future arrives.