# 96 When to let it go

I recently read a post on the blog slow love life ' a lost friend leaves an empty chair'.

It really struck a cord with me, I thought I'd share a little...

"Sometimes you have to get divorced from friends, just like you have to get divorced from spouses. Sometimes that is the more loving thing to do--it means you are protecting yourself, and removing toxic energy from your life. Sometimes you just need a separation, while each person cools, and grows. Some friendships evolve as your life changes; others hit the wall. It is a painful rupture, not entered into lightly. It doesn’t mean the friendship was wrong to begin with--it means it has reached an impasse, or died. It certainly feels like a death; there is an empty space where there once was someone sitting in a chair, chatting and laughing. So be it. We become more cautious about giving our hearts wing, as we get older, because we are aware of the potential for loss, and anticipate its heavy burden."

image via sunday supper

I love this part of the Auden poem "the more loving one'...

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

And here's the rest over at slow love life.

Cx

#64 Pleased To 'Meet' You

It's a funny kind of experience this blogging caper?

In many ways it feels the same as making a new friend.

Although most people wouldn't guess it to meet me, & in fact people that I have had a conversation with in regard to it didn't actually believe me, I am incredibly shy.

I think the reason people don't believe me is that I'm not exactly quiet, I probably talk way too much in fact (Probably???).

So I guess I do a good job of hiding it any way... Even if it doesn't feel like it!

Also, the more it matters to me what someone thinks of me, the more I tease them. This is a terrible habit I've tried to break with as yet no success.

I honestly am inwardly cringing quite constantly through the entirety of just about any conversation I have. Ever.

In some ways I find it easy to 'let people in' but I have come to realise that although I perhaps make a show of doing so in that I quite constantly tell my friends & family (with complete truthfulness might I add) how much I value them & how much I love them, realistically, there is maybe 3 people who actually know me.

I'm not imagining for a second that this is something that only I do. I know a lot of people do the same thing (if not everyone?), I find as it's something I am so aware of doing that I find it quite easy to recognize when others are doing it too.

It is a strange thing that we would protect ourselves & build walls against something as wonderful as friendship & genuine human connection but so very understandable at the same time?

There is a quote that I first read when I was about 14(?) that has always stayed with me although I don't know who it is by...

" To reveal myself openly & honestly, takes the rawest kind of courage.

If I expose my nakedness as a person to you, do not make me feel shame.

Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?

I am afraid to tell you who I am, because, if I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am... & it is all I have. "

Quite a sad thing that I have yet to move on from something that as a teenager I recognized as something that could be improved upon, but I guess that sometimes the most obvious & day to day lessons are the hardest to learn.

While I was trying to find that quote in order to check that I was remembering it correctly (that took a fair bit of burrowing through old journals!) I came across this one as well...

"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book shown to him by heart, and his friends can only read the title." ~Virginia Woolf

Which I think raises another point, that it is incredibly hard for anyone to understand why you are who you are & what experiences brought you to this point.

Just as hard can be the acknowledging & recounting of these experiences which I suppose is a large part of the reason it is not so often done.

Sometimes, it can also be difficult to hear of other's journeys, most especially when it has been through hardship or pain, & be able to somewhat separate your feelings of your own past & feel confident that purely be being witness through the retelling of what has been (or what is) that you are supporting them & validating their feelings...

But I've gone off on a little tangent here.

What I am ever so slowly getting around to saying is, that it is an interesting thing to be settling in to this blog. To be watching it slowly form as an odd kind of friendship in which I gradually become more comfortable in letting pieces of who I am sneak their way in...

Thank you for being my witnesses. I appreciate you.

C x