"Please remember that often gentle goodbyes are acts of great courage and kindness. Holding an unhealthy relationship close is not love. Listen - is it kinder to hold someone close and hate her or let her go so you can love her?" -Glennon Doyle Melton
Some things are very hard to understand, much less accept. Some things you never want to have happen to you. I remember being warned often that my friendships would fade.
Young friendships are fun and free and easy, less to do with shared interests and values as with proximity and convenience. But even when based on shared interests and values, older, wiser folks knew that those interests and values change over time.
One such older, wiser person patiently spent hours of her time each week telling us all the things she knew we wouldn't listen to until later. She warned us we were not the people we would end up being yet but that our personalities would develop more between the ages of 18-24 than ever before or again in our lives. We didn't believe her until it happened to us.
I do find myself now in a much different place. Not just older or in different life circumstances, but a vastly different person. I have changed my mind on many things. So have many of my friends.
So it's no wonder that we have drifted apart. But it's still very, very sad. You never think your friends will not be your friends. I deeply love each friend who laughed and cried with me and everything in between, from my elementary school best friend to my middle school posse to my high school squad to my college crew. I treasure those relationships, memories and people more than I can say. I have tried to maintain contact (personal, not just digital) with many of them, but it's harder now. We're all over the place, geographically and otherwise. We have jobs and families and non-concentric social circles. And when we find time to catch up, sometimes it still doesn't work. It's not the same. We're not the same. And it will never be the same again.
I would say this is the hardest growing up lesson I'd had to learn so far.
I am still trying to swallow the realities of it. Everything in life, like the seasons, comes and goes and comes again. Seasons of life are less predictable but just as inevitable. The flowers of spring wither in fall and disappear in winter, then different flowers bloom. So it has been with relationships.
Though it still makes me sad, I am forced to learn how to enjoy the flowers while they bloom, accept their departure and anticipate new growth. It seems harder even to act as gardener and prune when needed. I am not good at walking away. Though I can't decide which hurts more: to prune or be pruned.
I do understand, at least conceptually if not emotionally, that letting go is sometimes necessary. While I wish some had chosen to stay, I can fathom that at the time it may have been necessary for them to walk away from me. I may never fully understand or agree with their reasoning or ultimately their decision. But I can assume the best of them and trust that they were making the choice that seemed most right in that moment.
For those that simply don't have time to connect anymore, I hope they know what their friendship has meant to me. I hope they replay some of our greatest hits memories sometimes and smile. I trust that we were what we needed for each other at the time and wish each other well from a distance (and/or with virtual 'likes'). Thinking of it now, perhaps I should reach out again for old times' sake.
Here's to old times, friends.
Thanks for the laughter and the thoughtful conversation. Thank you for the precious memories. Thanks for laying out in the sunshine of life and huddling together through the storms. Thanks for all you have been to me and for me. Thanks for the good times. Thanks for letting me in.
To those I have had to create distance between, thank you for your grace, space and understanding. Thank you for sending your good vibes and wishing me well from a distance. Thank you for trying to learn the hard, sad lesson of seasons with me.
And to those courageous ones who had to make a difficult choice to let me go, to walk away, I thank you especially. Though you are the hardest to thank, it's you I have the most to thank for. From my relationships with you, I have learned and grown the most. I respect the decision you had to make. Thank you for choosing to love me by leaving me rather than holding me close with bitterness, hurt and hatred.
To all my friends gone by, I hope our relationship can bloom again someday, in some new way. I have only good thoughts and well wishes for you. Thank you, dear friends, for having been.
