For me, the past year has been
a lesson in letting people go.
Conversely, it has also been a lesson in letting people hang on. Relationships—friendships—may require work,
but not fights and death grips. No
matter how tightly you try to hold someone in your life, they are already lost
to you if they’re not reaching back to take your hand. My most successful relationships are
friendships in which I am often separated from the person by several states and
maybe even an ocean but, no matter what, the depth of the friendship has never
changed. And I think that’s because they
value me as much as I value them.
In the past year, I went
through some really hard times and I couldn’t bear to hear myself aloud, so I
just stopped talking to everyone. I
stopped answering emails, Facebook messages, texts, phone calls… And while that kind of behavior doesn’t
necessarily make me a very good friend, in the extenuating circumstances, the
right people understood and they didn’t let me go. They held out until I was ready. And then all I had to do was one day pick up
the phone or return an email or go to dinner.
It was in pushing away the people I loved, that I finally saw the
mistakes I had made in trying to hold on to failing romantic relationships. Holding on is a mistake. People come back if they want to.
My friends are my unconditional
loves. Making friends in New York has
been difficult for me, but it is happening slowly. And I am very lucky to have a friend who
texts me to help me make it through a particularly bad work day and who lets me
call her crying when it feels like the sky is falling.
I write a lot about love—romantic love. I write about sex and dating and heartbreak
and everything that comes with such territory.
But what didn’t make it into my thesis and what rarely makes it onto
this blog is the fact that friendship is how I’ve made it through the pitfalls
of romance and somehow came out alive and loved, in spite of lost relationships. It’s what gets me through the workday when
I’m counting hours and wondering what I did wrong with my life; I have a friend
or two who are proof that sometimes I do things right. Sometimes.
It is when I look at my
friendships, that I see for sure what I would like romantic love to be. Of course, I would like someone to sleep
beside me, hold my hand, and laugh when I tell a stupid joke. I would like someone who wants to be an adventure with me. But what I really want is someone who knows
me. Someone who wants to always know me. Someone who wants me to know them. I want someone who holds on and who wants to
be held.
That’s what I’m holding out
for. And, in the meantime, I’m glad I
have my friends.
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