This Is Me Letting You Go

by Heidi Priebe

Timing is a bitch, yes. But it’s only a bitch if we let it be. Here’s a simple truth that we all need to face up to: 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. The right people make you want to throw away the plans you originally had for one and follow them into the hazy, unknown future without a glance backward.

When you are with the right person, time falls away. You don’t worry about fitting them into your complicated schedule because they become a part of that schedule. They become the backbone of it. Your happiness becomes your priority, and so long as they are contributing to it, you can work around the rest.

The truth is, when we pass someone up because the timing is wrong, what we are really saying is that we don’t care to spend our time on that person. There will never be a magical time when everything falls into place and fixes all our broken relationships. But there may someday be a person who makes the issue of timing irrelevant. 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.

The idea that someday somebody will love all our flaws is a subtle excuse not to work on them.

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. Just be the person you’ve been waiting for.

So stop looking for The One to spend the rest of your life with. Be The One.

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

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

We settle for the person we love over the person who could push us—to be bigger, stronger, greater versions of ourselves. We tell ourselves that love is enough. That it conquers everything. But we forget that love shouldn’t be the thing that conquers our lives—we should be.

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 the potential of what could have happened had you been the kind of person who’d stayed.

Staying angry is like continually picking the scab off a cut because you think that if you keep the wound open, you won’t get a scar.

Forgiveness isn’t about letting injustice reign. It’s about creating your own justice, your own karma, and your own destiny. It’s about getting back onto your feet and deciding that the rest of your life isn’t going to be miserable because of what happened to you. It means walking bravely into the future with every scar and callous you’ve incurred along the way. Forgiveness means saying that you’re not going to let what happened to you define you any longer. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you are giving up all of your power. Forgiveness means you’re finally ready to take it back.

Just be the freaking person who cares more. Be the person who tries harder, loves stronger, and gives more of a shit than all of the half-alive people who surround them. Be the person who answers their messages, shows up to their commitments, and doesn’t leave others hanging or guessing at their eternally vague intentions. Be the person you wish you were dating. If you’re sick of the game, then stop playing it. If you’re tired of the bullshit, then cut it. Because the last thing this world needs is one more indifferent person. If you’re the only one left with passion, then use it. Use the hell out of it. At the end of your life, go out with a bruised-up, worn-out heart that gave too much love, loved too intensely, and felt too fiercely. Go out with the certainty that you gave it everything you had and didn’t hold anything back. Go out empty-handed when it comes to should-haves and might-have-beens. Because it’s an infinitely more fulfilling way to live than the alternative. It will always be more honorable to be out in the field getting trampled on than to be on the sidelines feeling superior for never having tried.

We love the theory of multiple universes because it allows us to believe that all the people we didn’t become, all the roads we didn’t take, all the times we turned left when we should have turned right, didn’t wither and die a senseless death. We like to believe that somewhere out there, there’s a Universe where we get to have made the other choice. The one that might have changed us. Grown us. Made us into bigger, braver people than the ones who we became instead.

In some Universe, these choices are not mine. In some lifetime, I did it all better.

I used to believe that there were so many Universes for you and I. There was the one where we held it together. The one where we stuck around, worked it out, ironed out our heartbreaks, and forgave one another for it all. There was the one where there was nothing to forgive—where we grew up as slowly as we needed to, never had to turn against each other, didn’t have greater ambitions or wandering eyes or weary, mismatched hopes clasped too tightly to our chests. One where everything happened the way it was supposed to. There was the one where it was simpler, easier, pure. The one where we wanted the same things, laughed at the same jokes, and loved each other’s families as if they were our own. Where my ambitions didn’t push you out of the picture and where your insipid lack of confidence didn’t tear us apart at the seams.

But we don’t live in any of those Universes. We live in this one, the one where we lost each other. And this has been the hardest Universe to swallow.

Out of all possible Universes, we landed in the one that broke us. The one where two halves did not make a whole and every molehill turned into a mountain. This is the Universe where, in ten hundred thousand tiny ways, we were wrong for each other. It’s the one where we’re always going to be.

Because the thing about loving you is that I’d have waded through an infinite number of Universes trying to find the one that’s right for us. The one that would have suited us, strengthened us, let us be the partners we needed to be for each other.

You have to remember that the Universe is infinitely more chaotic than we give it credit for—that there are people you’re going to meet who you couldn’t dream up if you tried. That there are situations you’ll encounter that you never would have pictured yourself experiencing. That there will be days bursting with more happiness and light than you could possibly fathom from where you’re standing now. You have to think of all the times that life has surprised you for the better and know that it can do it again. That it will do it again—as long as you stay open to those changes.

As long as you don’t let the endings close you off from the new beginnings waiting ahead.

This is me accepting that you’re leaving. It’s my acknowledgment that there’s no further argument to make, no angle left to take, no plea or bargain I could wager that could get you to change your mind and stay. This is my subtle resignation to our downfall. This is the crack running between our two hearts that turned into a valley and engulfed us. It’s my acceptance of all I couldn’t bridge.

This is my conceptualization: That someday, I’m going to have a wedding, and that you will not be there. That the ring that gets slipped on my finger will be picked out by somebody else and that the people sitting in the front row with eyes brimming and hearts bursting will not be your family members. This is my acceptance of the finite absurdity of knowing that I will someday promise my life to someone who is not you and that I may even be happy to do so. That one day, I’ll see changes and beginnings in a way I never saw them with you.

That sometimes, the best thing you can do for someone you love is to let them go—to do more, feel more, and be more than the person they could ever have become by your side. So this is me unclasping my fingers. This is my parting, my reluctance, my heartache, and my final gift to you. This is me letting you go.