letting go

Until the lesson is learned

by 2clouds

Are we bound to repeat the same mistakes and continue in the same patterns until the lesson is learned?

That’s what I keep reading anyway.

I don’t believe the universe is testing me by sending me people or putting me in situations that require me to break a pattern or continue to grow. The universe is not interested in me or my life enough to make such moves.

But we seek such people or situations out ourselves, consciously or unconsciously.

I keep reaching for the wrong people. Always the ones that don’t reach back. I’ve written about this before. It’s a pattern that I am aware of. It’s not that I do this all the time. But over the years, I keep running into people that I end up wanting to hold onto even though the effort is not returned.

There is one such person in my life right now. I have plenty of reason to like her and to pursue a friendship. But the effort is not returned. It was, for a while. It no longer is, though. And still, I keep trying.

It takes a lot for me to give up on someone. When I ultimately do give up, it is out of the need to protect myself from hurting any longer. And it’s not as if these people go out of their way to hurt me (not actively and at least most of the time), but I am hurting, nonetheless.

Do I have to keep letting people go until someone decides they want to stay? I don’t need a ton of friends in my life. But the ones I choose, I always hope will choose me as well. And enough of them do. But when someone doesn’t, or I am not sure that they do, are they just another lesson for me to learn to let go? To stop reaching for someone who doesn’t reach for me?

This is just one example of the many repeated patterns we can’t easily shake. We always end up in the same or similar situations and keep making the same mistake. Usually, because we hope for a different outcome. Perhaps this time things will be different.

But why would they?

What reason do we have to believe that things will be different this time? Because we can’t be that unlucky again?

Except, we bring these situations about and these people into our lives, at least in part. We attract them and don’t say no to them. We go into it with an unfounded hope that we’ll do better this time.

And eventually, we will. When the lesson is finally learned. I know this from experience.

I know I have a tendency to attract or be attracted to emotionally unavailable people. And I want more from them than they are able to give. It’s not their fault. If the interest would be mutual, the effort would be equal. It’s not. I can’t blame them. And I don’t.

But letting go and moving on is not one of my strengths. I have to keep working on it. People come and go. Most of the time with most people we are okay with that. But there are those we don’t just want to let go again. It sucks when we realize we might have to.

It sucks to realize that they might be part of a lesson you have yet to finally learn.

I get better at it. But I don’t think I will ever be good at it.

Reaching for the wrong people

by 2clouds

Every now and then I have an epiphany. It usually happens when I talk to myself, thinking out loud. That’s when I seem to have the best ideas.

I’m currently in a situation where one of my friends has retreated. I’m not entirely sure why. We had a miscommunication. We were exchanging messages when I was feeling a little down. In fact, I was feeling lonely. That doesn’t happen to me very often. I can usually deal with it, but I didn’t deal with it very well when we talked.

And that meant that what I said, which could have been meant in jest, weirded her out. the problem is that she didn’t say anything. Instead, she simply didn’t answer at all. And of course, that weirded me out. I knew I could have handled that situation better, could have chosen my words better, but for her to simply not reply sucked.

Ultimately, after two days or so, I wrote her again to defuse the situation. That’s when she confessed two having been weirded out. I admitted that I have been in a weird mood which affected my responses to her, and I apologised. The problem here is that she again simply did not reply.

That did not just suck, it hurt.

It’s completely unnecessary. Instead of reaching out, talking to me, or asking what might be wrong, she retreated, and I don’t see why.

Usually, I would have followed up and sent her another message, just to explain myself a little more. I have composed that message, but I decided not to send it. Because I always do that. And in the past, it never served me well.

My impulse is to reach out. I have a problem with letting go. Especially when I like somebody. But I have been the one to reach out more often than not. At some point, I’m gonna have to leave her to it. If she wants to reach out, she knows where to find me. But I don’t expect her to. In fact, I expect that she will send me a random message at some point and pretend nothing ever happened.

When I deal with situations like that, I think out loud to myself, essentially conversing with the other person without them actually being there. I can only go with what I would say myself, not how they would respond, but it helps me sort through my thoughts.

And there it was, this epiphany, as I was thinking that I keep reaching for the wrong people. Not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because they don’t reach back. And what is the point of reaching for someone who doesn’t reach back? I’ve been doing that so much in my life and I was always the one ending up hurt in the end.

Mind you, I have people in my life who do reach back. They ask how I am, they want to know. They are my friends. And I’m blessed for every single one of them.

The question is why I keep reaching for those unavailable ones. One of my friends would probably say that this is one of my projects to figure out. Maybe it is a lesson in letting go, which will repeat over and over again until I finally learn. Because it is very clear that I haven’t yet.

In German, we have a saying that hope dies last. And I am one of those people who seem to operate on that premise. As I said previously, always giving somebody the benefit of the doubt even when they have shown themselves to be undeserving.

Ultimately, to find the ones who will stay, those who reach back, we have to go through a lot of people who simply don’t care enough.