Letting go has been a constant challenge for me.  I remember sitting in high school science class, ruminating on something (that is my therapist’s word, “ruminating”), when a classmate told me, “Let it go.”  I probably only remember that moment all of these years later (1) because I don’t let things go and (2) because it struck me at the time how insightful this guy was.  This classmate who was outwardly very different from me had actually accurately assessed something I was struggling with.  I have replayed that moment and said “Let it go,” in my mind many, many times in the decades since.

This thought comes to me today for a couple of reasons:

1. Some of my relationships are changing in ways that indicate they may not survive. Friends evolve, sometimes in different directions.  Partnerships that were once well-oiled machines start to have grinding gears.  People want conflicting things out of life and sometimes it means they no longer fit together like they once did.  This is painful and sad to me, but I am working on putting myself first and not sacrificing my time for things I don’t enjoy just to make other people happy.  Sometimes letting go is just letting things be and seeing how they progress, and sometimes it is making a deliberate change and saying, “I can’t be with you/be here anymore.”  Friendships and relationships in general should not feel like work.  This doesn’t mean they don’t require effort, but you should enjoy them.  If I find myself bemoaning time I have to spend with someone, that isn’t kind, and it isn’t healthy.  If I am always the one asking someone to spend time with me, always suggesting dates and never getting a response – I actually am getting a response, aren’t I?  LET IT GO.

And jobs – well, they have to pay you to show up, and one of the reasons why is that you may not always enjoy it.  Fine.  But if you find yourself being irritable because you can’t shake work after you leave, or constantly complaining about your job…if the fire is out and you can’t reignite it…if you find yourself looking for gratitude by comparing your job to Deadliest Jobs or Dirtiest Jobs or some other far-fetched scenario just so you can convince yourself your job could be worse (“At least my boss never locked me in his office from a secret button at his desk!”), it might be time for you to explore other options.

2. Some of my relationships have ended. A friend unfriended me on Facebook and while this may seem trivial (and often it is), this is a person I care about and I know that this unfriending signals something deeper than a desire not to see inane status updates.  I am considering reaching out to her off of Facebook, but why?  She made her choice.  And this is something else I am working on, something I have been dealing with way back into my dating days (or days of wishing I had someone to date): you cannot love someone enough for both of you.  If someone has chosen to exit my life, as much as it hurts, I suspect that is not my problem to fix.  I have had friends who quit speaking to me and would never tell me why, even though I asked – repeatedly – and apologized for whatever unknown thing I did to so grievously offend them.  That wounded me because it was so foreign to me, but later in life, I had relationships that I ended without explanation because I finally grew wise enough to understand that some people actually never listen to your words.  They only hear what suits them.  They only speak.  Perhaps, for my former friends who dumped me without a word, they felt we would never see eye to eye and it simply wasn’t worth the effort.  I don’t regret trying to apologize, because I cared.  But at some point, I had to let go, because they weren’t coming back.

I have some relationships that I was forced to end with fewer words than I would have liked because those relationships existed in a professional setting and I lacked some control about what I could say.  I was considering reaching out to one of those people and then I realized it’s been 8 years.  That seems really silly.  That seems like it might do more harm than good, sort of like if I ever find the ex-girlfriend of a guy I used to see and send her a letter of apology.  “Hey, I just want you to know I’m really not a bad person because I slept with your boyfriend.  See, I was crazy in love with him and also I was super young…”  A good response to that letter would probably be, “Hi, thanks for asking for forgiveness for this sin you committed 20 years ago.  That would have been the time to do right by me – not now.  Thanks for stirring up painful memories.  I’ve moved on.  Too bad you haven’t.”

LET GO.

It is very hard to be present when you are fixated on the past and worried about the future.  I know this, and I am trying to repair myself so I don’t sacrifice the gift of now for what I can’t change behind me and what’s unknown ahead of me.  I’m not sure how good I’m doing since I’m writing about these old memories, but since I have probably counseled myself into not reaching out to them, I guess I’m making a little progress.

Thanks for reading.