I think the way we view relationships is a little bit flawed.
Throughout our lives, we meet people. We share stories. We form relationships. We fall in love.
Sometimes, those people will stick around for a long time. More often, though, we will wake up one day to find that people just aren’t in our lives the way they used to be. It can be heartbreaking to let someone into your life thinking they’ll be around forever, only to discover that they are temporary.
One of the most freeing things I’ve learned in the last year is that some connections are meant to be just that: temporary. However, I don’t see why that has to be a negative thing.
In the last year, I have watched some of my closest friends become total strangers. I have lost touch with people I thought would be with me forever. It would be so easy to blame the pandemic, the distance or some kind of miscommunication for these lost connections, but that would only set me backwards. The truth is, they just weren’t meant to stay.
Some of the greatest pieces of myself came from people who I only knew for a short time. During my third semester of college, I spent every single day with the same two people. We went to the movies. We went on car rides. We ate practically every meal together. We were inseparable, until I transferred to a different campus.
I will always love them with my whole heart, and the memories I made with them are some of the best I have, but I will probably never speak to them again. And that is OK.
Sometimes, we get excited to meet someone who makes us feel something so strongly that we become focused on holding onto that feeling. We try to cling to it for as long as we possibly can, but that isn’t realistic. Instead of gripping onto those emotions so tightly, maybe we should focus our energy on simply existing within them for as long as they last.
Life isn’t made up of a few long-term commitments. It’s made of a lot of little moments.
I’ve had so many little moments that should have remained as moments, but instead I allowed them to last far too long. It can be hard to let go before you’re ready, or to lose someone too soon, but sometimes holding on is the worst thing you can do.
It’s OK if a friendship doesn’t last past college. It’s OK if you fall in and out of love with someone within just a few months.It’s OK.
If the moments you spent with them brought you any amount of happiness, then it was worth it. Even if things ended badly. Even if things ended unexpectedly. Even if you weren’t ready.
Some things just aren’t supposed to be permanent. You learned, you grew, and you became a better version of yourself. You will always have the memories, and sometimes that’s enough.