You know what the converse of thinking about leaving people behind is?
Thinking about the people that you can't let go.
I realized this weekend (as I drove to down Boston, then back to Montpelier, then home to South Burlington, then back to Stowe, and back home one more time - you know I love those long drive contemplation sessions,) that the complete opposite of what I had been feeling last week, was sitting on my heart. What about all the people that I can't seem to leave behind? Even if that relationship no longer serves to make me better?
I'm sure there are a hundred reasons that I can't let go of the idea of certain people. I think it's a lot like having a picture-perfect idea of what it's like to travel through Greece, or live in Atlanta, or work at Disney World. There are these things that we hold in our hearts, and we make them out to be so big, and so wonderful, and of course we don't want to let them go.
When those things are people though, of course it's different.
Because as much as we don't want to always admit it, people can make us or break us.
I'm not going to sit here and try to say that other people don't have the power to smash my heart to bits. It's a nice idea though, to think that we all have this impenetrable wall, that no one can hurt us so long as we know our own worth, and stay true to who we are, and yada yada yada.
Look, that's not real. People can hurt you, that's real.
And sometimes, those are the same people that you can't bear to leave behind.
What I still can't figure out is why. And maybe no one knows why. But that's the weight on my heart this week, why can't I just let them go too?
And it is a "too" - I don't know about y'all, but there's not a person in my heart that I can't let go, that hasn't already ditched me six ways to Sunday. That's maybe part of the problem, right? We know they already let us go. We know they already said, for whatever reason, this no longer serves to make me better, or bring me joy, or whatever. And yet we still hold them in our hearts.
I think of that hold kind of like matter. Remember? Matter occupies a physical space, and it cannot be destroyed. Whatever is here is here, and it must stay. It can be redistributed though. So even though we have people that settle in us - I don't care if we're talking about lost friends, or grandparents, or exes - there are people that we hold in our hearts.
We don't always get to shut those down. Your feeling cells don't automatically reassign that love, or adoration, or kinship. They hold it. They pit it away in you, where it aches in the back of your throat, and burns just behind the pit of your stomach. Where you can feel your heart actually sinking just a little with the weight of it. And you can't stop it. You can't stop caring.
Because it's settled in you, and I think even two, or ten, or 25 years from now, it might still be sitting in you. And it will stay with you, they will stay with you. And you'll just have to move it around, knowing sometimes it will hurt, knowing that it won't leave you.
Do you think that's a thing?
That we'll always hold certain people with us? Even if they don't want to be our friend anymore, or they left this world, or left us behind?
I don't know that that is the best-case scenario. But I don't know that it is the worst either. You know? It might be okay to feel this big, and just recognize that certain people will stay with us. I guess this could be a wear-your-mushy-confetti-heart-on-your-sleeve kind of thing too. This could be a feel all things really largely kind of a thing. Those are usually my things.
But I have to imagine, even if it is - even if the weight of this is just a little dramatically large on my heart - someone else feels that too, right? Someone else knows what it means when I say I can't let them go.
Girl, me too.
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