This Is Me Letting You Go

by Heidi Priebe

the people we meet at the wrong time are actually just the wrong people.

You never meet the right people at the wrong time because the right people are timeless.

Because when someone is right for us, we make the time to let them into our lives. And that kind of timing is always right.

If there’s one thing we all need to stop doing, it’s waiting around for someone else to show up and change our lives.

Love is wonderful and worthwhile and enriching but it should never be a standoff between the person and the life that you want.

You can’t have it all. But you should be able to have what matters.

You should be able to have, at the bare minimum, a relationship that allows for growth and exploration on the part of both parties.

But if the only time you see eye-to-eye is when you’re staring into each other’s, you’re signing yourself up for a lifetime of hard choices.

Here’s the stark truth about the person who is right for you: They want the same lifestyle that you do. How do I know this? Because that is, by definition, what makes them right for you. To be with someone whose eyes light up when yours do, whose heart races when your blood also pounds, who is enticed and inspired by the same forces that drive you forward, is a gift many of us never truly get to experience.

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.

You fell in love with their potential. You fell in love with the maybes and the could-have-beens. You fell in love with all the trips you didn’t take, the plans you didn’t make, the hazy, unintelligible future that stretched out before you without any opportunity to build upon. You fell in love with the potential of what could have happened had you been the kind of person who’d stayed. Had you been the person who could fall in love fully, without pause.

You’re tired because you’re making a change. You are exhausted for all the right reasons and it’s only an indication to go on. You are tired because you’re growing. And someday that growth will give way to the exact rejuvenation that you need.

At the end of the day, you have two choices in love – one is to accept someone just as they are and the other is to walk away.

You have to know that you can recover from those aches, that you can heal your own wounds, that you can trust yourself to walk away from the situations that do not grow or aid you.

The need to bend over backwards, to accommodate others, to seek validation from those who do not deserve your heart, disappears.

Who to love and who to leave becomes simple. And expectation slides out the window.

Anger doesn’t realize that the past is over and the damage has been done.

Forgiveness is just what you take to stay hydrated along the way.

Forgiveness means giving up hope for a different past. It means knowing that the past is over, the dust has settled and the destruction left in its wake can never be reconstructed to resemble what it was. It’s accepting that there’s no magic solution to the damage that’s been caused. It’s the realization that as unfair as the hurricane was, you still have to live in its city of ruins. And no amount of anger is going to reconstruct that city. You have to do it yourself.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you are giving up all of your power. Forgiveness means you’re finally ready to take it back.

Some failures are not a lesson learned but a lesson forced.

You need to be alone when you’re not ready. When you meet someone who’s patient and kind and well meaning and yet some part of you is holding back. You have to know that it is no one else’s job to break down the walls that you’ve built up – that is a fortress of your own responsibility.

Someday you’ll understand that you can be all of those things alongside somebody else. But first and foremost, you need to learn to be them all alone.

The side where we don’t just suspect that we deserve better — we know. And the side where we are proud of ourselves for never accepting any less.