Know that as important as hanging on is, so is knowing when to let go

I just had a new way of thinking about this, maybe it’ll help some of us at least:

Hanging on:

a) You feel bad because you’re getting left behind
b) You’re going nowhere because there is no opportunity to

Letting go:

a) You may feel either equally as bad or worse
b) But you’ve got the oppportunity of going somewhere, even if you aren’t taking it

So it’s really a case of the lesser of two evils, and granted that feeling bad is inevitable, it really comes down to whether you want to have that opportunity open to you, and I would think a chance is better than no chance at all.

it was very hard, when a very good friend of mine and I just….drifted is the word? apart when she started uni (she’s in the year below me). she started having her own life, which was fine, I wouldn’t have expected otherwise, and anyway, I wasn’t ashamed to admit I had done so myself in my first year when she was still stuck in a school she didn’t belong to, as had I.

But when she moved out and didn’t tell me (and I found out from her photos on FB, and don’t deny that FB is useful for anything other than keeping track of your friends…and maybe keeping in touch with them very occasionally) I thought, ok, never mind, maybe she was just too busy. But the second time—I can’t remember what it was, but she didn’t tell me either and it really did it in for me. I just remember her not telling me she moved house because that was the initial and bigger shock of the two.

But I didn’t want to let go, because I thought maybe she was really that busy, and blah blah blah, you know how self deception goes. Plus it would’ve been even more awkward because my mum got her job from this friend’s mum, and is still working there! I already had all the warning signs…she moved house May of her first year, we met in July that year just as a catchup and I could already tell we had drifted so far apart there was nothing in common, and then that second thing and I had that gut feeling all along since she started her first year, which I very wisely and rationally ignored (see the sarcasm here?) When my mum suggested/forced we meet up again after that second incident, I felt really reluctant to, and that’s when I realised.

And it really feels good, to just let go—you know you’re now “free” (more a mental thing I suppose than anything) to go on and do other things, rather than be held back and anchored by something in your past which is in your past for a reason.