Issues! or Issues?

Sometimes...its okay .... to Let. It. GO.

I have a friend who once told me... 'Relationships aren’t hotels.. You can’t just check in and out of them whenever you want'.

I wish she had told me earlier.

So often we behave as though we have unlimited access to people’s lives as though, like a hotel we have paid for, they have the privilege of having us in their lives. As a result, more often than not, we threaten to take that ‘privilege’ away, or never let them forget that we can or (the more daring amongst us) revoke it away all together.

For me, more times than not, like my subscription to the gym, I have QUICKLY withdrawn myself from a relationship. Somehow, I managed to come to the conclusion that my 'sacrifice' will fulfill some good and noble end that will leave both of us somehow ‘better off’.  However, this time around I got a ‘you have issues’ response to my version of Leonardo Decaprio’s romantic SUICIDE in the titanic for his beloved ‘Rose’(I have clearly EXHAUSTED that movie). The statement was quite harmless really, in fact I found it quite amusing (mainly because I agreed WHOLEHEARTEDLY) but still there was something raw and unexpectedly tragic about hearing those words from a person I have come to care for beyond measure that had my subconscious reciting rules of combat: ‘the best defence is a good offence’. But something kept my mouth shut. Instead of firing a few ‘playful’  canons of my own (it wouldn’t have taken me long to find a few) I gracefully accepted the ‘light hearted’ ridicule.

Why?

Because sometimes when we choose to walk out of someone’s life whether our intentions are the utmost purest, while we have gone off diligently executing our 180 degree turn, getting high off our revelation, having our SOS prayers to God answered, our ‘issues’ straightened out,  hearts changed..We do in fact change... But the other person, you know, the one you chose to leave behind during your version of ‘eat, pray, love’ ... Is stuck in the moment where you hurt them. Since they weren’t invited on your ‘members only’ journey why should we expect a heroes welcome when we decide we are ‘whole’ enough to re-enter or at least pass-by their lives.
We cannot choose how people will cope with the wounds, bruises, cracks and heart breaks we inflict on them. That is ENTIRELY up to them. So if you don’t want to return to the horror that is a battlefield of carcasses YOU left behind don’t bruise an ego, don’t break a heart or alter a soul. Just don’t. You can't cross a bridge you burnt!

So once again what do you do when that person is referring to you as though you are still the same person you were before you made your dramatic exit? What do you do when your gut is screaming for you to defend your ‘honour’ and to speak of your change, to share of its joys and your brand new enlightened state?

I don’t know about you but I swallowed it...ALL.. And (quite) gracefully laughed.

Because although God answered my SOS plea, although the things that were issues just aren’t issues anymore, and even though I received my miracle, my relationship wrap sheet with this person has ‘repeat offender’ written all over it. Reputations, after all, are not built from words so what could I have said that would have been of worth to them and assured them its not the same, I’M not the same?....Nothing. I hung up and prayed, that someone else would be ALL the things to that person that I failed to be and more.

Its hard, but sometimes we just have to accept that the people that DESERVE to experience and enjoy the full extent of our change are, unfortunately, the ones that probably never will.


Like I said, I have a friend who once told me... 'Relationships aren’t hotels.. You can’t just check in and out of them whenever you want'.



I wish she had told me earlier