Letting Go

I once got a “would you rather” question. It asked, “Would you rather marry a random person for the rest of your life, or somebody new each year?”

To me, the answer was obvious. I’d choose to be with someone new each year, because I didn’t want to risk dealing with a lazy abusive idiot for the rest of my life. With this choice, I might’ve met a really nice and amazing person, but I would have to let them go after a year. This is quite sad, but it reminds us to cherish the limited time we have with a person.

To those who know me in real life, for the whole of 9th grade, you had never seen me without my puzzle piece necklace. You might’ve never noticed it, but I had never been without it since my 8th grade graduation day.

I had been at my old school for 10 years, from preschool all the way up till 8th grade. My school was very small, and everyone was very close. I knew the names of every student at school. Our grade was one of the most “complete,” meaning a large majority of our graduating class had the same members since 1st grade.

After graduation, everyone in our class was given a puzzle piece pendant. It symbolized our unity, and how we would always have a piece of our connection and journey with us. When all the puzzle pieces were put together, it fit together into a circle.

During these 10 years, I was everybody’s friend, but nobody’s best friend. I was never especially close with one single person. We were all very close though. They all truly meant the world to me.

But one day, I realized I had slowly drifted away from that world.

Usually, It’s very difficult for me to move on, especially with people whom I loved and cared for so much. But they don’t seem to care that much anymore, and surprisingly, I have found that I don’t either.

In July, I went back to Connecticut for the first time in a year, and visited some of my old friends. None of them were wearing their pendants, and some had misplaced theirs already. They commented on mine, saying “Enya! You’re wearing your puzzle piece!” It was pretty fun catching up and spending that time with them, but I wasn’t sad to leave at the end of the day. “See y’all in a year!”

All of us knew I wouldn’t miss them, and they wouldn’t miss me. It’s not like we would never see each other again. We were just old friends who had moved on with our lives. I’m glad we were able to peacefully move on without any pain, retaining all of our good memories and none of the bad.

I took off my necklace that day.

Moving on cannot be forced. It hurts, especially if it’s more sudden or one sided. It takes time to heal. At the beginning, you will miss them, but someday you will realize you haven’t thought of them for a week, a month, a year.

It took me a bit more than three months to get over my first love. He was a kind soul, brilliant, a deep thinker, and a great friend as well. Me being stupid and immature, I lost any chance I had of continuing any friendship with him. It was difficult to recover from that, to say the least.

It’s so much harder to get over a relationship that ended on good terms than one that ended on bad terms. I got over my first boyfriend as soon as I realized that my life would be infinitely better off without him in it. Not to say it was easy throwing away 2 months of memories, but knowing that your life will be so much better without their toxicity makes the process a lot easier. If your relationship wasn’t the best, your subconscious automatically paints the person as evil and pins all the blame on them, freeing your mind to move on without any self doubt. If it ended on good terms, you have nobody to blame but yourself, and that makes it all so much harder.

The deepest and closest connections are the ones most painful to lose. The ones where you seemingly share a soul with them. For the first time in 15 years, I had found people I truly resonated with a deeply emotional level. It was then I realized that the strength of a connection of a relationship is not necessarily a function of time. I’d known my old friends for over 10 years, and I had never felt friendships as resonant as these.

> "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened”

This is probably one of the most difficult pieces of advice to follow. It’s so hard not to be sad when you realize they’re never gonna be a part of your life like they were before, no more good memories being made, no more stories being shared.

As a final piece of advice, enjoy every moment you have with someone, because you never know when they’re gonna suddenly drop out of your life. But don’t ever let these connections drag you down. When the time comes to move on, it’s okay to let go.