This Is Me Letting You Go

by Heidi Priebe

Just because someone is not around to appreciate the complexities of who you are does not mean that you deserve anything less than pure joy.

Implication here is that the person who will perceive these complexities has to be someone else. That this pure joy will be external, so it has to come from another person. How about recognizing that joy in myself?

Who you are doesn’t cease to exist because there’s nobody there to admire it.

This is a valid point.

here’s what we don’t want to admit about love: it is a crutch that we use all the time. The idea that someday somebody will love all our flaws is a subtle excuse not to work on them. The principle of two halves making a whole restrains us from becoming our own better half.

I'm conflicted with this. I disagree that we use the idea that we don't "work on" our flaws because we're waiting for someone to love us as is. If someone won't accept all of me, as I am, right now, they aren't accepting of me. I work on my flaws on my own, separate from someone else's validation. I do agree about the two halves thing. You need to be a complete person all on your own before you can truly be ready to find someone else to share your life with.

Love holds us back in an infinite amount of subtle ways that perhaps we do not even realize. And the guarantee of its absence may just be the ultimate sense of liberation.

This is a powerful insight.

Love shouldn’t have to be the biggest compromise of your life.

Another 100% accurate truth.

We owe it to ourselves to live the greatest life that we’re capable of living, even if that means that we have to be alone for a very long time.

Or forever. Another implication that there will be someone else to fill the void, even eventually.

You say what you mean and you don’t make time for maybes. In a world full of dishonest people, you choose not to become one of them,

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to make amends with who hurt you. It doesn’t mean befriending them, sympathizing with them or validating what they have done to you. It just means accepting that they’ve left a mark on you. And that for better or for worse, that mark is now your burden to bear.

This is fair.

It’s hard to get over a cheater because the only person you hate more than them is yourself. You hate yourself for falling for them. For investing in them. For turning a blind eye to every red flag that was a clue along the way. You scorn yourself for believing every lie they told, and letting it all come to fruition. You hate yourself for not putting together the puzzle pieces that you were never actually holding.

All of this. 100% right.

We don’t ever lose people we love in their entirety and perhaps we never should – we ourselves become bigger, more encompassing people because of it.

That eventually I’ll meet someone new – someone who loves the foods you hate and laughs at things you don’t find funny and appreciates the parts of me that you once left undiscovered.

I loathe this. The real central theme to this book seems to be don't worry you'll find someone else. That's not what I was looking for and I don't find that theme helpful.