I want to acknowledge yesterday, in some fashion. I just don’t have the words just yet. Maybe tomorrow. Today, we are going to kick back to the topic that was at issue BTI (before the insanity).
Are you ready to be done with this topic? I hope not because if I’m honest, there’s a shit ton more that we haven’t touched on yet. I mean it. We have just skimmed the surface of this people-changing disaster. That said, I think we’ve kicked things off right and I’ve given you enough information to chew on for the time being.
I want to talk about what happens when someone changes and we are trying to figure out what to do with that information. This is not an easy plug and play scenario, right? Like it’s really easy to say fuck that person and call it a day, but it’s not. I want to do two things here. The first, is to revisit the lyrics from earlier. One particular stance, if you will, as follows:
You were running through me like water
Now the feeling’s leaving me dry
These days we couldn’t be farther
So how’s it feel to be on the other side?
Ooh. That burns, no? It hurts me reading that because like I’ve already described, I’ve been there. Recently, in the past, always and forever. Someone goes from something that feels like a comfy sweater to the itchy as fuck one that you can’t wait to rip off when you step foot through the door. Hives, a rash, and perpetually irritated skin. Where is my soft fleece? Where is that familiar little rip at the bottom? What the fuck happened?
When we are on the other side of discovering how someone or something has shifted or changed, we tend to feel irrational. Impulsive. We want to either profess our adoration to save the thing and prevent further change or we want to tell that person or those people to go fuck themselves seven ways till Sunday. You might fall somewhere in between, but I’ve often been in one of these camps or the other. That’s just how it works out. I want to hold them suffocatingly tight to me to prevent further loss or I want to scorch the earth. The in between feels too scary, too uncertain. The extreme behavior feels safer, ironically.
I am here to tell you that you have to work to find the in-the-middle. I mean you don’t have to, but I highly recommend it. You have to (should?) take a few steps back. You have to reassess. You have to consider. I am NOT suggesting obsessing or overanalyzing things, my friends. I am talking about something reasonably in the middle.
Both of the friends I was describing the other day are going through stuff right now. Big shit. Life changing events and situations. This is not an excuse to take a giant crap on me and my life, but it bears mentioning. It means that if I care to, I could decide to take a step back and see where the cards fall. I could recognize that things might not be easily digested right now or understood. I could contemplate that maybe my friend(s) is not themselves in this exact moment as they are experiencing grief, confusion, anger, et cetera. I could give them a momentary pass. I will NOT hang around to see how the roller coaster flies. I will exit myself from their direct line of sight. I will just make a concerted effort to not write them off completely. I will not do the work to put them assuredly in the rearview mirror. I will consider them temporarily misplaced, not lost forever.
This takes work. I am not suggesting that this is an easy shift or transition. In fact, in some ways it is far harder than completely writing someone out of your life. It leaves things a bit murky. There is an in between. There are open wounds. There are hurt feelings. There are feelings of missing and nostalgia. Worst of all, there is a possibility that when the smoke clears, they will have proven themselves unworthy of a break. They will need to be removed and forgotten. But, this is a chance we take when someone has been meaningful to us.
I cringe when I hear that expression “if you love something, let it go” for ten thousand reasons. First and foremost, I’ve heard it during the toughest times in my life. When I was clinging, like a life raft in a storm, to flailing relationships, this catchy and oft-used phrase has been whispered in my ear. It has made me feel ornery and pissed off. Why should I need to let go to prove anything? If I’m going to let something go, isn’t that IT? Doesn’t that mean it’s all done, all over?
Well of course that’s not what it means. But that’s what it feels like, eh? Like why should I have to step back for someone to appreciate my presence in their life? Well, you shouldn’t need to do that and you aren’t. That’s not the point of the exercise. If that is why you are moving into it, I’m here to tell you that you might want to reconsider your actions. In a very real way. This is about you stepping back as a way of protecting yourself, from them. This is about you creating space for you to breathe, remain safe, and see things from a fresh perspective. If the exercise produces the side benefit of bringing that person back into your life in a meaningful way, well that’s just dandy, but that’s not the point. The point is you understanding what you need out of the people in your life. Don’t say nothing. The people that claim they need nothing, they need the most. They are the neediest. Why? Because they don’t know what the fuck they want and need, so they want and need it ALL. I know what I need. Respect. Kindness. Consideration. Thoughtfulness. I need someone to call or write because they miss me, because they want to. I want someone to think of me when I go through really bad shit or really good stuff and oh, everything in between.
This is not an easy task. Figuring out what we want and need. We are going to explore this a ton more in the coming days. For now, understand that you have the right to put a relationship on ice. You can let it go entirely if it’s too painful or you CAN do a wait and see. You can acknowledge that someone has changed and the changes don’t feel good. You can see if time makes the changes feel better or if time produces an adjustment to those changes so they are more palatable. I can’t write that script for you. You have to dope that out for yourself.
I’m here for you. Here for it. That’s all I can say.
Hang in there.
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 