Letting Go Of Someone You Loved- Part 1

"I was never insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched." - Edgar Allan Poe You never know who it is that will find a place in your heart, take up residence, and then refuse to leave. It may be someone that you are supposed to love, like family, or someone you haven't even spoken to. It is hard to describe the feeling of seeing or just thinking about them. A mixture of peace and excitement, admiration, longing and hope. If the object of your admiration and you communicate and find the feeling is mutual, then you could have a beautiful friendship or a chance at an epic love story. Sounds simple but why do most relationships end? For an end to come about, someone must be the first to leave. Death, abandonment, emotional withdrawal, or mutual decision will all break a connection. To attempt to understand this trial of human existence, I have broken this topic down into two parts: The one who leaves and the one who gets left. This is a lot of information to digest at once so I will post it over a two-week period. There is a great deal of pain involved in being left by someone you love, so I will begin with it.

When you are the one being left-

The emotions that overcome you from being left are varied but intense. Disbelief, anger, guilt, disappointment, panic, hopelessness, sorrow, and sometimes relief. The need to know why can be as overwhelming as the panic at the perceived loss of control (you never really had any). The one walking away first has all the power so finding yourself in this situation can create a sense of powerlessness like no other. It creates an environment or condition that is not of our choosing. Victor Frankl says, "Decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is." If this is true, then we must come to the painful realization that we have some decisions to make about the condition we find ourselves in. We can choose to-

1. Die- either figuratively or literally. Many people have ended their lives in response to being abandoned. The pain of enduring a future without someone they cared deeply about or relied heavily on is too much to bear. When done literally, it's game over. You will leave this world in sorrow, another tragedy brought about by the inability of our fragile minds to handle the intense feelings of being human. My heart breaks when I think of the pain that is experienced to bring people to this point as I have also peered over its black edge. "Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable." - Milan Kundera We could choose to die figuratively instead. Rise from the ashes of our burning, gloriously, like a phoenix. Reinvent ourselves into someone new, someone tougher, someone that when left will accept, recover, and move on. There have been many, thankfully, who have chosen this option and have left maps for the rest of us to follow. I am sure that they have saved more than just themselves. "You've seen my descent. Now watch my rising." - Rumi
2. Let the pain consume us- and in so doing become resentful, hateful, angry, and bitter. When you get hurt, there is often a primal need for retaliation. This is the angry side of pain and no good will come from it. Many lives are ruined and many lies are told to accomplish this type of reaction. "You want revenge? You're just making other people as miserable as you. Revenge is just the path you took to escape your suffering." - Ichigo Kurosaki, Bleach (2004) If retaliation is not your thing then perhaps a sense of outrage at the injustice of it all might be the tie that keeps you bound to your vendetta. We would like others to know that we were wronged and acknowledge our pain. We demand to know why, but sadly, no one has to tell us. Our unwillingness to let go of the hurt prevents us from moving on. "Then I realized something. I was keeping my old wounds fresh and open, as evidence for a trial that would never come. " - Mark Nepo We will keep scratching the scabs off our wounds, sabotaging their healing in a desperate attempt to end the pain by causing ourselves more pain. What if Carl Jung is correct when he says "There is no 'healing'. There is only letting go." The scar will always be there but the one that kept getting reopened will be thicker and more noticeable than the one left alone.
3. Accept- otherwise known as letting go, moving on, or admitting defeat. This process can take years or come about suddenly but you will know it has happened with your heart, not your head. "How do you move on? You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back." - J.R.R. Tolkien Acceptance is a sad and tender form of love, a well springing forth from your heart and through your eyes. It is forgiving without understanding. It is still feeling love for someone and letting go of them without trying to manipulate the outcome. It hurts, maybe forever. It gives you the gift of a future and keeps you from being stuck in the past.
4. Become numb- some people will use this as a coping strategy to handle the pain of rejection and loss. This emotional withdrawal is a form of self-protection, but it comes with a cost. "When we numb the darkness, we numb the light." - Brene Brown It requires that you denounce love and never 'fall for that again'. It requires that you hold onto a negative attitude about relationships and that you place all of humanity in a box, claiming they are all alike. It is boasting of your strength instead of admitting your fear of being vulnerable. It is the avoidant personality's favorite coping mechanism, a retreat used to keep from processing their emotions or dealing with the consequences of their actions. If you find yourself mechanically living without feeling because allowing feeling might cause too much pain, remember that you have cut yourself off from feeling love as well. Use it if you have to but don't stay in the grey of numb for long, it will erase you.
5. Use it to understand yourself and others- Our life is a very narrow slice of reality and while it is extremely important to us, it may not be that important to the other people that are in it. All people come with a backstory, triggers, cognitive biases, attachment styles, expectations, etc. These issues cause imbalances and we sometimes use relationships to help prop us up in the areas where we are weak. When we are cut off from one of our pillars of support, we must find a way to repair the missing part, despite being in pain. Here is where self-reflection and/or the study of human nature can save you. You may find that you have used or manipulated the other person, unknowingly. Maybe they had a terrible childhood and have a lot to work through on their own and you were just collateral damage. "If I accept the fact that my relationships are here to make me conscious, instead of happy, then my relationships become a wonderful self-mastery tool that keeps realigning me with my higher purpose for living." - Eckhart Tolle To choose this option is to help us forgive ourselves and others.
6. Detach- detachment can be used when someone has cut you off, but you still must see them daily or often. Like letting go, detaching is also done with love. You are no longer allowing yourself to be energetically or emotionally entangled with them. It is one of the greatest gifts you can give another, the freedom to fully be themselves. It is accepting reality and allowing them to be honest about not loving you the way you need. You no longer try to control or manipulate them. You don't expect something in return or seek validation from them. Your self-worth, happiness, and inner peace do not depend on them. You have freed them from that responsibility. If they cross one of your boundaries, you let them know and step away, but not defensively or disrespectfully, just calmly and unemotionally. You are aware but not involved. "Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it." - Ram Dass To those of you who have achieved this level of interaction with someone who you were deeply entangled with, my awe for you is immense. Please send help to those of us who can't seem to quit getting our buttons pushed.

Having relationships requires one to have courage and hope. They also require us to be vulnerable and vulnerability will expose our weaknesses, sometimes for all the world to see. Our exposed weaknesses can be the source of our destruction or we can turn them into strengths. We can upgrade our reactions to choose gratitude, love, and forgiveness and then help others do the same. For there to be a choice, there must be opposites. These opposites cannot be separated as they are each a wing on the same bird, a different side of the same coin. They exist as a whole.

When we are overcome with powerful emotion, it is easy to forget that on the other side of our misery is our joy. It might help to imagine a coin in your hand. On the one side of this coin is your pain. Look at it, see the color, feel the weight, and give it a face. It is yours forever, attached to you like a magnet, a representation of your unique experiences. It can't be taken from you by someone else, or given or thrown away by you. It can be turned over though. Imagine what the other side looks like lying there, shining on your palm. What color is it now? What picture is stamped on this side? Does it represent peace, love, joy, forgiveness? This is also yours and can't be taken, given, or thrown away, only ignored and neglected. You would not value this side if you had not seen the other. To have someone you love leave you is a life-changing event. When it happens, I hope that we choose to transmute this loss into a gain and then share our strength with others who are having trouble flipping their coin. I have put all the quotes used in this blog post on a free, printable sheet you can access here.

Love and Hope,

Big Sky Baby