Knowing When to Let Go

Sometimes the best way to handle things is just to let go.

I’ve found that I am the person everyone goes to when they need someone to talk to. I’ve often asked myself why that is, why do they come to me and not other people? The answer to that is pretty simple when I really take a second to think about that – they come to me because I always make time for my friends. On the surface, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but when you have no one you can talk to yourself, this starts to become an issue. And then a relationship begins to feel one sided – meaning that the other person is coming to you because they know that you will always be there to help them, but when you need them, they are nowhere to be found.

As someone who places such a high value on friendships and relationships, it can be hard to admit to myself that I’m being used – because it’s so far from anything I would ever do to somebody else. But I found myself in a situation where someone I had met rather recently began to use me because I provided that perfect person to vent to. We would talk daily and for a while things were pretty great and I was happy because it appeared as though I had made a really great friend. But in retrospect if I look at how things were in the beginning and the way our conversations were, they were almost always one-sided, and when I became a little more invested and confessed how I felt, things began to go in a direction that I didn’t know how to handle.

You see, they acknowledged my feelings but essentially told me they were not going to be reciprocated, but they still wanted to be friends because they liked what we had then. That’s when I should have taken a step back and considered what it was I really getting out of the friendship. After that point, things would only bring me pain, because this person would intentionally discuss things they knew would hurt me to talk about. And they did this because they knew I wouldn’t say, “No, I don’t want to talk about this,” because I didn’t know how to say no to people I considered to be my friends, especially when they were coming to me for help and advice. So this went on for a while and it continued to eat away at me because here I was acting as an outlet and advisor for their problems when they never had any time for the problems that I was having. I let this go on for far too long because I didn’t understand that I could say no.

I was so caught up in the idea that things could get better. That our friendship would go back to what I thought it was in the beginning – an equal relationship. And most importantly, I didn’t understand that what I was feeling mattered – that I mattered. I was so caught up in the fact that this person told me I was important that I couldn’t acknowledge the fact that their actions did nothing to show that I was important. And that’s what I want to convey – that when you realize the entire relationship is on your shoulders – whether this be a friendship or a romantic relationship – if you are the only person who is dedicated to it, then it’s time to let go. You are too important and life is too short to waste it in on a possibility that a miracle change will occur. Because the unfortunate reality that we have to face is that people aren’t going to change unless they want to, and no matter how hard we wish for them to see that we matter – the chances are they won’t, and so all that’s left for us to do is to just let go.