I FACEBOOK-STALKED YOU TODAY

I facebook-stalked you today.

You and I haven't spoken for a long time. There was once ugliness between us -- hostilities we could forgive but not quite forget -- and I think we both just stopped trying and went our separate ways.

Sometimes that makes me sad -- we once meant a lot to each other. But, time and life moves on, and if I'm honest, I don't spend much time dwelling on it anymore. We are part of each other's pasts, but not meant to be part of each other's futures.

But, every once in a while, I think of you. I wonder how you're doing. I think about what drove us apart and how I could have handled things then and later differently - but mostly, I just hope good things for you. I don't want your life to be painful.

So I peeked a little into your life -- And I can say these things truthfully.

I am happy for you for the good things you have encountered since we were last friends. I'm glad that you have people in your life who support you. I'm deeply sorry for the hardships you have encountered and the pain that has tried to break you. Interestingly, I think that you and I, as individual people, have hardened and softened in not-dissimilar ways. We probably have a lot of parallels in that journey, though they really don't look the same, and I'm not sure that our pieces still fit together in the way they once did.

And while I'm not sure reconciliation is in our future -- it could be if we were both better at forgetting and forgiving and trusting.

All that said -- I'm okay with where we are. Time has healed much, and I still love you and I still pray good things for you, whether our paths cross again or not.

May God keep you well.

THEMES OF MY LIFE: LETTING GO AND MOVING ON

Broken relationships make me feel ashamed.

That's not to say that I think all relationships need to be unending. I think that there is a natural pattern to some friendships, and it's normal for that to ebb and flow. It's normal for people to become a part of your life and to then sometimes fade out of it. I've often compared it to a tapestry of color in your life. Some people are meant to be a color that weaves itself through the whole piece, and others are meant to add short splashes of color and vibrancy to different parts of the piece. This is healthy.

But, when I look back, there are three relationships that stand out to me as endings that I regret. I think I regret them less for THAT they ended than I do for WHY they ended, or maybe even just for HOW. For the brokenness that necessitated a parting... and maybe for the length of time I tried and failed to hang on to relationships that I should have just accepted were over.

One of the things that has always hung me up is regret and shame over character misjudgment. You go into a relationship, and maybe coexist in a relationship, thinking that you are kindred spirits... or with an assumption that you see them in the same way that they see you, or share similar values. But, when time has revealed the ways in which I have been wrong, it has shaken my confidence and my trust in myself. I have felt ashamed of my own naivete and gullibility. I should have seen things more clearly. I should have been more aware. I shouldn't have let affection cloud my judgment. And if I was wrong about this, what else have I been wrong about? How can I trust myself going forward?

That self-doubt has often had me wrapped up in questions of when it's time to hold on and when it's time to let go. In some ways, it's my own values that have held me in that space longer than necessary. My impulses toward grace and empathy have led me to accept far less than I'm worthy of, and to believe I'm worthy of less than I am. There is a balance between extending grace and demonstrating self-respect, and I have often fallen on the wrong side of it. A friend wrote to me, "Every one of us deserves to be in relationships that are balanced. We are worthy of having relationships where we are getting what we give." And that was something I "reasoned" myself out of way too often.

What it has taken for me is to get out from under the story I was telling myself. That's been different stories for different circumstances. Stories of hope and history and persistence and reconciliation.  All good stories... and stories which are often true.  They just weren't true here, and I needed to stop telling myself that they were.  The real stories certainly weren't as pretty, and sometimes they hurt quite a lot. Actually, usually they hurt quite a lot. But, I found that an unhappy reality was much easier to let go of, once it had fewer illusions to buoy itself up.

I had to accept that it was time to part. Not all roads have to run parallel forever. Not all colors are forever. Pick your metaphor.

Most times that I have come to this place, I have let go with anguish. It has been flush with pain and I have ripped off the band-aid and suffered as quickly as possible. Somehow I bought into this idea that I was weak to hurt, and so the most grown-up strong thing to do was to rush through the healing as quickly as possible. We're not very comfortable with pain and grief, and I'm not sure that we're ever quite taught how to deal with it.

This last time, I took a different route. A little bit of Brene Brown, a little bit of Craig Malkin, a little bit of a couple others. It was one of those months where you read the same sentiment from a number of different sources, and you think, "Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something." And so, I slowed down. I consciously chose not to rush through the pain. I let myself feel the hurts. I let myself feel the disappointments. I didn't try to reason myself out of them or berate myself for feeling the things I was. I just let it be. I let myself accept what it was I was feeling and how things were.

And then...  it hurt less. It hurt less and I began to understand all the things. A friend once said to me, in the midst of a conversation on the inevitible of heartbreak:

Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it's C'est la vie. Sometimes you're so ready for them to go, it's just a massive relief.

At the time, I don't know that I really understood it. But, with my heart and head in a different place, I finally thought, "Oh. This is what she meant."

I stopped making it all about me, too. I was a card-carrying member of the Self-Blame Club. I can find a way to blame myself for any problem.  And while sometimes there is a little bit of truth in that, I was taking on blame for things that didn't have anything to do with me. I was blaming myself for problems that were not mine. In a nutshell, if I was the problem, I could fix the problem.

But, when I began to accept and internalize that the problems were not things that I could just fix by "being better," I began to see our stories as ones that needed to end. Some stories simply need to end so that new ones can begin. When I realized that, the past lost a little bit of its power over me. I could begin to let it go.

Letting go wasn't a one-time shot. Sometimes I had to re-"let it go." I found that letting it go was a choice I had to keep making until I didn't need to keep making it. Every once in a while, I have to do it again. But, it gets easier every time. Plus, without my illusions, there really isn't anything I want to go back to, anyway. That makes it easier to move on.

Looking back at them all, there are still things I regret. But, I can look on them with a little bit more kindness.

For the girl I was and for the girl I wanted to be and for the girl I am now.

SILVER LININGS, LESSONS LEARNED

I am optimistic...  or maybe it's not so much that I'm optimistic, but I believe in the good in things. I'm really good at finding silver linings.  If you were around for my rantings over Crazy Grumpy Lady, you will remember how we clashed when my insistence on locating silver linings crashed up against her insistence that there aren't any.

Not saying either is better.  Just saying that she was annoying as hell. :)

But, I was thinking about that as I was searching for silver linings in my own chapter-closings. What I was thinking about was "Okay, that was an odd decade...  what was going on there? What was I supposed to learn from all of that?"

And I wasn't really sure.  When I thought about the most obvious things I'd learned about myself, they weren't really all that different from what I believed when I started -- aside from maybe a fresh realization I hadn't had before that I was pretty naive and apparently had "Easy to Manipulate" stamped across my forehead. Was that it? Not that this was the only thing.  There were honest accountings of bad choices, unhealthy motivations, pride swallowings, and uncomfortable admissions. There were people that I wished I had treated differently, people I wished I'd listened to more. Advice I should have taken, stubbornness I should have bested.

Maybe those are the lessons.

But I also thought, "Maybe the point isn't the mistakes you made or the lessons you were supposed to learn.  What do you regret doing?"

And really... nothing.

I didn't regret trusting. I didn't regret caring. I didn't regret trying. I didn't regret supporting. I didn't regret pouring in.

and while there were specifics in the middle that I could have done a whole lot differently, who I was... she wasn't someone I regretted being.

Just maybe next time, I can listen to myself and trust myself a little bit more.

THE HOLES THAT DON'T FIT

Many years ago, I was part of an online group of friends, lovely people that I loved and cared for (and still do).  But I ended up leaving the group for an extended period.

A lot of things happened. I changed. I changed a lot.

And then I tried to go back.  But, it just didn't work.

There were a lot of things going on there, but in retrospect, I think that a lot of it was that I had changed.  But the hole that was left for me was in the shape of the person I had been before. I kept trying to shove my changed self into a hole that no longer fit me, and I eventually gave up. Who I had been and who I was just no longer matched... and I couldn't figure out how to reconcile the two.

---------

Maybe I've been going through something similar lately. I've changed over the last couple years -- and in ways that I'm pleased with. Ways that I don't wish to unchange.

And I think that I've been trying to force people to fit into my changes. That I've asked them to change in ways themselves that parallel mine.  And perhaps they have been doing the same... changing and expecting me to line up accordingly.

I think that perhaps I've come to a place where I am beginning to understand that happiness won't come by expecting others to change for you, or expecting others to fit into your changes, or to change in the same ways that you are. It comes in knowing who you are, who you've become -- and living accordingly with who that is.

Sometimes that means accepting that the people who fit with you before... don't. And that doesn't make anyone bad. It just means that the longer you stay trying to shove each other into who you want them to be now, the longer you'll both be unhappy.  That perhaps the answer is to just let each other be changed - and maybe that means parting ways.  That is an okay thing

Not all roads run together forever. But that doesn't mean that both roads don't lead to somewhere worthy of going.

BURNED BRIDGES AND THE COLORS OF YOUR ENDINGS

I am a girl who, at least in relationships, likes Black and White.

I want to know where we stand. I want to know if we're okay or if we're not.

If we're not, I want to lay all our chips on the table and fight out the things that are broken until they're not broken anymore.

Or if they can't be fixed, I want to know that too. I don't want to go on wondering if things can ever be okay again or not. I want to know.

I want to know why.

And if we decide that things can't be okay, I want to shut the door. I want to end the chapter and our story... I want to know that it's okay to start a new one.

I guess they call that closure.

But sometimes I guess that I need to learn that it's not a bad thing if doors don't close all the way. It's okay to leave them open a little just in case it's a story that isn't really ended yet. It's okay to not know what happened, and it's okay to simply let the ending be.

It's okay to be hurt and it's okay to be mad and it's okay to be upset about the things that don't feel fair. You aren't wrong to feel those things, and don't let people tell you that you are.

But just because all those things are true... it doesn't mean that you have to burn your bridges.  Just let it be...  maybe you cross that bridge again some day. Maybe you don't.  But... this way, at least you can if you decide that you want to.

Not every ending has to be Black and White...  sometimes they can be a little Grey.

AFRAID TO TRUST YOU

You hurt me.

Or maybe I hurt you, too.  I don't know anymore.

I forgave you for that. I know I tried. I hope you forgave me too.

But when it came to trying again, when it came to putting myself at your mercy...

I held back. I couldn't give you that power.

I'd been hurt once.

That's not even all the way true.  I'd been hurt a lot of times.

I'm not sure you even cared.

I was afraid to trust you. I was afraid to be hurt.

Because, you see, the words you spoke and the things you did, they didn't match up.

I didn't know how to separate the truth from the lies anymore, and I wearied of trying.

I am not a very discerning person. I am often fooled, often hurt.

Some people call that gullible. Some people ridicule that and make me feel that believing people is a shortcoming.

Maybe it is. Maybe it's naivete to hope for and believe in the possibility of the good.

All I know is not being discerning means I'm wrong a lot.

Not being discerning means I hurt a lot.

And I was afraid of hurting again.

So I decided not to trust you.

That remains a decision filled with pain and doubt and sometimes regret.

The past can be loud.

And misleading. We don't always remember the truth, often just a twisted version of it.

But I decided.

And forward is the only direction left to go. 

BALANCE, SELF-RESPECT, AND MOVING ON

It's come at me from several different directions this week, the idea of letting go.  The idea of knowing when to stop beating a dead horse into the ground. The idea of knowing when enough is enough and when it's time to pull yourself up, develop some self-respect, and move on.

This is a hard issue for me to get my head around.  I have feelings about it coming at me from all sides.

We prize loyalty.  And I think we should.  But we also convince ourselves that we prize blind loyalty, the whole "I will stick by your side, no matter what" sort of attitude.  On the one hand, that's noble. To accept someone for whatever crap they throw at you, that takes a deep loyalty and capacity for forgiveness that I admire. We revere Jack in "Titanic" for floating in the ice-cold ocean, all the while reassuring his beloved Rose that he'll never let go.  It's sweet, it's loyal, it's romantic.  But, guys, Rose was a whiny pain, and Jack became fish bait. Is fish bait the most respect we can give ourselves?

A good friend of mine had this to say this week and it resonated deep within me (I was going to edit this to make it shorter, but I can't find any part of it that I'm willing to part with):

I think that in many cases where a person is trying to decide whether to let go of someone, the relationship has reached a point of imbalance. Imbalance isn't healthy. Imbalance sucks at your mental health and your sense of worth. Imbalance means you're giving more than you're receiving, or vice versa, and every one of us deserves to be in - and our heads should demand from our hearts - relationships that are balanced. If the other person has stopped giving back what we need, we can't change them. It's then that we have to slap ourselves and demand that we recognize our own worth. We are worthy of having relationships in which we're getting what we give! Balance balance balance. Yes it's hard, because we're not just giving up the relationship but also all the hopes and dreams we had for that relationship. But each of us has a responsibility to ourselves to treat ourselves with kindness.

Yet on the other side of the coin, I know that there have been times when I've been the one who's hoped for loyalty.  I've been the one who's been selfish, who's screwed up. I've been the one who's been grateful that someone else waited long enough for me to come to my senses and get off my raft floating in the ocean to SHARE it with those alongside me.

But even then, I suppose, that's when it's become balanced, hasn't it?