Leave Well Enough Alone

Winter has been long and cold, and not just with the weather. No, this year there was a lot of emotional turmoil going on in my life with the relationships I have had. It is through these difficult times which we find ourselves growing or backsliding.

As humans, we long for relationships and the comfort and acceptance of others. We depend on family, build friendships, and engage in romantic relationships all through our lives in the hopes of finding the people who make us feel loved, and who we love in return. However, there are times in which people come into our lives and the relationship becomes toxic, destructive, and painful. This doesn’t make you a bad person nor a weak person. It makes you human. Some personalities simply don’t mesh well, and there is nothing you can do to change that.

When these relationships occur, it can throw your life into a downward spiral of anxiety, depression, and defeat. It can become extremely difficult to pull yourself out of the negative, especially if part of you is fighting to make the people around you, including the negative person, happy. That drive to please people and live up to what is expected can overrun our understanding that sometimes it is time to let go.

There comes a time you HAVE to let go, and when you do, you have to truly let it go. Walking away from a toxic relationship can be extremely painful on both sides. Often the person you felt was toxic to you feels the same way about you or feels you have done harm to them in some way. This is simply a situation of perception, and it can lead to a lot of drama.

Now I’m not saying go around blocking them then throwing shade. Sure, we all want to vent about our pain, but doing so in a way that hurts the other person will solve nothing. However, if you have removed them from social media or your phone contacts, that means you need to leave them be.

An example of this is when I had to recently remove someone from my life who was toxic to me. I unfriended them and removed the apps on my phone from which we used to correspond (mainly because they were the only one I talked to through that app). However, the person continued to send me messages, angry and upset over the situation. While it was difficult to ignore the messages and move on, it was the healthiest thing for me. I chose to not log back on and look at the messages because all it would have done was cause pain.

With this world of social media and always being connected, it is easy to become a super stalker. People hunt down others to see what has happened. There is a twisted voice in almost all of our minds telling us we want to know the other person is hurting as much as we are. We search out answers and ultimately end up hurting ourselves worse. If you want peace, you have to say goodbye and mean it.

Letting go is painful, difficult, and heartbreaking. Losing someone who we felt love and caring for, for whatever reason, can cause scars in our hearts making us a little more jaded in life. Continuing the pain through messages, investigating, and letting the pain control your life will only deepen the scars. The best way to heal is to let go and move on. Instead of thinking about the past, look at the things around you.

My husband often tells me that when the sadness and depression hits, it is like falling into a hole. To keep the depression from winning, you then have to look for handholds on the walls of the hole to cling to. These handholds are the positive things in your life. Look at the people in your life that do love you and have made your life better. Think about good things going on in your life, such as success with work or school or a vacation you are looking forward to. Instead of being consumed by the pain, pull yourself out of it with the little things in life.

Everyone goes through these hard times now and then. It is sad, but it is also a reality of life we must all suffer through. However, once you have parted ways, it is time to leave well enough alone. "Let it go," as Elsa would say, and move forward with your life. You will find that healing will happen faster, and you will be stronger for it.

If you wish to read more of my articles on mental health feel free to click on the links below. And as always, if your heart leads you, please feel free to leave a gift. Until next time!

It’s All in Your Head

When Anxiety Won’t Go Away

When Depression Feels Like Rage

The Mask That Hides Us