Don’t Be Fooled, Not Everything Is Built To Last
“Let go so you can grow free”
Letting go is a hard thing to do in the moment. Your brain is always ready with a million scenarios of what could eventually happen if you just chose to hold onto something. Whether that’s a friend, a partner, a lover or a hairdresser.
Whatever or whomever it may be, choosing to set yourself free from the ties that bind can be a lengthy process. One that is fraught with uncertainty, fear and anxiety.
Holding on is easier than letting go. At least that’s what your brain wants you to think. If you can just hold on a little longer, the thing that you’re holding onto will heal you, comfort you, be there for you when you need it.
But if you’re contemplating letting something or someone go, that’s enough of a reason to seriously consider giving it a try.
You wouldn’t be contemplating it at all if there wasn’t some underlying reason, a trigger that has bubbled to the surface and enlivened your mind. A betrayal, a misdirection, a series of unkind words or actions. Something. It’s always something.
I’ve never had much of an issue letting people go. I just had to be given a reason. A good reason, though. They couldn’t just steal some chips off my plate as I excused myself to go to the bathroom. It had to be something of note for me to turn my back. But once it came, the decision was easy. And I barely thought of them again.
My mother always ponders where this brutal (her words) streak of mine has come from. How I find it so easy to cut people off that have been big parts of my life for years or more.
I don’t quite know where it comes from either. As a highly sensitive individual, this cut-throat aspect of my personality is quite jarring.
Maybe it comes from losing a parent so young. An expectation that the person will likely leave anyway, so it’s much easier to become hardened to it. Rather than fall into the depths of despair that would come if I were to let all that sticky emotion in.
I haven’t had enough therapy to establish whether that is where this tendency comes from. Or whether the armour that has been built around me would have been less severe had I not endured such a loss, so young.
As I’ve grown older though, I’ve come to realise that this ability isn’t a weakness or a character flaw. As much as my mother would like to tell me it is.
It’s an asset. A shield that has prevented me from holding onto those who no longer hold my best interests in their hand or heart.
Yes, it means that my friendship circle has dwindled over the intervening years. And those to who I send an obligatory Merry Christmas text to each year have also become less and less.
It has, however, left me with the most important friendships that I have ever held, ones that are strong and deep. Built on shared values and shared eating. The friendships that I have chosen to walk away from were of a time and a place in my life. A place from which I have now moved on and grown.
There seems to be such an obsession with forever friends. Having friends that you’ve known since school or even childhood is seen as something of a badge of honour. To lose touch with these people is viewed as a failure. Heck, even the ghost of Samantha Jones is still existing occasionally, trapped within Carrie’s inability to let her go.
What if you’ve just grown out of the friendship? What if your friend warped into someone you no longer recognised, with beliefs that you, yourself could not get on board with, let alone support? Someone who held you back, became bitter at your success, wanted you to stay as you were before and not grow into the person you could be?
Is that not a success then? To have had the self-awareness to identify that this person that you’ve shared so much time with, has now become a toxic element to your life. Someone who no longer has your best interests at heart but who is doing all they can to keep you as you are. Encased in the past.
This was brought into sharper focus for me earlier this year when a friend that I used to be very close to a few years ago, reached out. When I say close, I mean really close — we spent the better part of 4 years running around together. Causing havoc and mayhem as only people in their early or in her case, the late twenties can.
She was from a time in my life when I was very confused, unhappy and ever so slightly unhinged. I was living in a new city, in a new house, with new housemates. I had a new job and an old car.
We partied, brunched, and travelled. Nursed hangovers throughout the workday. If there was loud and obnoxious music playing somewhere, you could bet we’d be nearby. Thrashing around like slightly crazed wood nymphs in the forest.
It was fun for a while. We felt invincible, like the coolest cats around. With our band of merry friends, we had a whale of a time — stumbling from one weekend to the next. Having little responsibility or regard for the world around us.
Inevitably though, the party ran out of steam — the lights we’d been running from flickered on and the darkness shrouding our decisions could no longer hide them.
I was becoming increasingly unhappy with the way my life was turning out. I was working in a job I hated, living with people who didn’t know how to use a mop or an air freshener. And I wasn’t taking care of myself at all.
So, I decided to leave and go travelling for a while. She was meant to come with me for the first few weeks and then return home as I ventured on. Some family commitments made it impossible for this to happen so I wandered into the wilderness of South East Asia alone.
There had always been an air of jealousy to our friendship, possession even. And this was further highlighted when we all but lost touch for my first month or so of travel.
She seemed annoyed that I’d left and that I was off enjoying life without her. I sent a few messages that sat unreturned and it was only when I sent her a ‘buddy box’ that the glimmer of our friendship began to reignite.
When I returned from my travels, I decided to go back to London and start anew. I had changed whilst I’d been away, not least my reliance on alcohol for a good time. This fresh perspective made me realise how little I wanted to go back to late nights and even later mornings.
I met someone a year or so after the London move and was overcome with excitement. I brought him back to the city my friend and I shared so she could meet him for the first time.
She, in turn, brought someone she’d gone on one date with the night before. What was meant to be my best friend meeting my boyfriend, turned into my best friend asking me to tell her what I thought of the chap she’d dragged along with her. It was strange and upsetting. The dynamic of our friendship had shifted even further afield.
We tried to keep things going after that, but then some things transpired that I just couldn’t forgive. So I decided to forget instead.
After the text I received earlier this year, I was speaking to another friend about it and she said that our friendship had always been a toxic one. “You had to be there for her at every opportunity, but when you needed the same she was nowhere to be found” — these words stuck with me as I was feeling guilty about having not yet replied.
It really got me thinking back over our friendship and the number of transgressions that occurred. I’d never thought of her all that much until then. That text made me start to wonder if I’d been too hasty to abandon our friendship. Had my initial instincts been wrong? Time reveals and heals many things but it can also distort them as well.
In not thinking about her for so long and then that text jolting me back to past memories, the good as well as the bad. I could have, for the first time, given in and rekindled this friendship. The shield could have faltered and brought very toxic energy back into my life.
Remaining strong in your convictions is crucial. And knowing that when you decide to move on with your life, 9 times out of 10, it is the right one. If you’re growing, you’ll always outgrow — whether that’s a person, a place or a habit. Don’t be resistant to that growth. Don’t let anyone hold you back from experiencing it either.
Let go so you can grow free.