I could use some 3D glasses.

In health class 6th grade, I learned from a goofy old PE teacher in short shorts about the “health triangle”: physical, social, and mental health. Good health doesn’t just refer to your body, he told us - it means having healthy relationships and an active mind. It means being physically, emotionally, and intellectually healthy.

I know that I’m terribly unhealthy in pretty much every way, but I realized the other day that I have started considering my relationships in the same way I consider my health - with the potential for multiple dimensions - and that I’m pretty dissatisfied with how one-dimensional so many of them seem.

With some friends, we talk about what’s happening in our lives, but about nothing deeper. With other friends, we only talk about everything deeper than what’s right in front of us. I feel a physical or mental attraction in some of my relationships, but not much more than that primal interest. I can just hang out and relax with some people without feeling any kind of pressure to give them anything; with others, I always feel the need to give everything. I constantly feel like something is missing.

I don’t like this. I don’t like how I compartmentalize my relationships, or the way I’ve reduced them to this unjust categorization of single dimensions. It invokes a keen sense of failure and an acute awareness of my inability to connect with a single person in multiple ways. I don’t know if this comes from a lack of practice, or if I just am not actively searching deeply enough for what I want.

It has also occurred to me that perhaps more dimensions exist in my relationships than I am able or willing to see at this moment. Everything is blurry - like watching a 3D movie without 3D glasses. I need some fresh perspective. I need some distance.

Or something like that.