Lessons in Letting Go Quotes

“Laura,” Rhys calls after me. “Please…please don’t do this. Don’t walk away from me.” But I keep walking. People are staring now, and I’m crying, but I keep moving. I can’t look back. There’s nothing left for me there.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“But learning to love myself means loving my mistakes, too. I may really, really miss Rhys—God, I can hardly breathe I miss him so much—but I refuse to let what a guy thinks of me define my entire existence.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“The heat in his eyes contracts into something like pain. We’ve become toxic people—the kind who stab each other just to see who can bleed the most.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“You inhabit this…this perfect world filled with perfect people. It’s impossible for me to let perfect go when I see how much you like it. How you practically worship it. I can’t be around it—you—and be who I want. I’m done, Rhys. We’re done.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“Seeing her laugh and chat and eat with abandon made me ache. She is everything I aspire to be; everything I thought I’d become when I walked off the plane in August, determined to take advantage of my fresh start. Everything I set aside when I started hanging out with Rhys.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“Our relationship may look perfect from the outside, especially if you read the papers and the gossip sites. But it’s not. Being with him has made me miserable. Letting him sweet talk me into all this ridiculousness has robbed me of my self-respect.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“I’m realizing I’ve become an object, something pretty and pleasing, meant to be consumed by the media and Rhys’s fans, ignoring all along that I am someone who needs to get healthy, and have fun, and let perfect go.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“I’m starting to realize that the connection we have—as glamorous as it may seem—is superficial. There’s something weirdly transactional about our relationship. Like Rhys keeping me around is some sort of good business decision on his part, one his accountant would approve of.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go

“I haven’t changed a damn thing about my life. I felt a good deal of self-hatred before, when I couldn’t live up to the impossible standards I set for myself—being perfect, being thin, making everyone happy. But now I hate myself even more for not making any attempt to shed those standards. Change them.”
― Jessica Peterson, Lessons in Letting Go