When someone leaves our life, we take it way too personally. What did I do wrong? Where could I have improved to make them stay? Realistically we shouldn’t have to think about it too hard. I’ve realized that sometimes we spend too much time thinking about why someone left that we forget to ask ourselves whether their leaving was actually a bad thing. Not everyone who walks out of your life is someone you have to hold on to or hold a grudge against.
Growing up you’ll make friends who say they’ll be at your wedding, watch your kids grow up and go through life together. You’ll also have relationships where you open up about past hurts, imagine life together and assume it’s endgame. Before you know it, they’re part of your past hurts too.
I was best friends with a girl who was there for me during some of the hardest parts of my life. We met during a time when I didn’t think I had much to live for. She helped me see the bright side of things and make me laugh when I didn’t want to. Throughout the years we got super close, I visited her every weekend when she moved to college and kept her updated through our nightly facetime debriefs. I later moved four hours away but still made effort to visit as often as I could and check up on her. Over time, I started to realize the friendship wasn’t as mutual as I thought it was. I stopped making plans, initiating conversations and putting in effort for someone who didn’t even bother to ask how life was for me. Not because I was trying to make a point or suddenly stopped caring but because I wanted to see what would happen if I wasn’t the one making the effort. We slowly stopped talking, I never visited the small town in East Texas again and eventually we grew apart. For a long time, I took it personally. How could someone who was a big part of my life just not care that we didn’t talk anymore? Was I actually important to her? What could I have done differently to save the friendship? I eventually realized I wasn’t the one who lost the friendship by stopping the effort. I just stopped carrying it by myself. I learned it’s okay to realize that someone can be in your life for a season and not forever.
The same realization came up again but in a relationship. When starting a relationship, you never go into it thinking “Wow this is going to end so badly.” You go into it hoping it works.
I once was in a relationship that I thought he was my person. He met my family I don’t talk to or see often, and I met his. Overtime he became my bestfriend friend. Our relationship felt effortless. We never argued and could spend hours doing absolutely nothing. From the endless trips to the park so I could get my energy out, to two-stepping to our song, there were so many little memories that made me think “Yeah, this is my person.” I wasn’t just happy in the moment; I started to picture my life with him.
Then somehow things started to change. Looking back, I think that is the hardest part. It wasn’t that the relationship was bad, it was that he started to turn into someone that I didn’t recognize. There were so many good parts of the relationship that made me want to hold on to it even when things started to become different. The conversations started to become the same, the effort slowly disappeared; the relationship felt more like a chore. Eventually we broke up. Afterwards, there were endless conversations, arguments and petty comments made back and forth. For a while I thought there was something I could do to make him stay, instead of realizing that wasn’t the person I initially fell in love with. I wasn’t trying to save the relationship we had anymore; I was trying to get back the relationship we used to have. After a few months, I came to terms with the fact that the person I once couldn’t imagine my life without was no longer someone I needed in my life.
Sometimes, you lose people because you have outgrown the relationship, the friendship has run its course or you’re finally realizing that you were holding onto something that wasn’t meant to stay. It doesn’t erase the good memories or make the relationship any less important; it just becomes a chapter you look back on. It’s not a loss; it’s just a reminder that everything good isn’t meant to be permanent.
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