Let’s move on, shall we?

Letting go is never easy. And change is sometimes just plain shitty (take the new Facebook timeline, for example. I haaaaate it).

I’ve only ever had to deal with the loss of one person I was incredibly close with and I’ve never been in a relationship with someone I wasn’t incredibly happy to never speak to again when things ended.

Friendships are a funny and very different exception to the rule of moving on. For me at least, friendships are the best of the best; the worst of the worst and take up far more time than any other aspect of life.

Shortly after I moved to Toronto, I found friendship in a girl who turned out to be the exact opposite of everything I ever wanted in a friend. I found it easy to get past her materialistic lifestyle when I was benefiting from her beautiful wardrobe, but after months and months of cancelled plans, feeling like a last resort and never being quite ‘elite’ enough for her to fully let me in, the friendship fizzled.

And shortly thereafter, it got shot dead in its tracks when she literally deleted and blocked me from every possible way I could ever get ahold of her. Fuh reallz, yo.

I grieved the friendship - realizing that I got far less from it than I put in - and moved my life on to other and better things, experiences and friendships. A part of me has always wanted to know why I didn’t make the cut but not a big enough part to invest any ounce of emotional effort into resurrecting the past…  As is expected of a 25 and ¾ year-old girl who has a career, an apartment and a real life.

There was a time and place for dwelling and sulking, and that time and place was high school.

I’m no saying I’m the queen of moving on, by any means. I’ve had break-ups last longer than actual relationships, I still wonder every single day how things got so messed up with my dad and I’ve cried over the loss of material things like my pink Blackberry Curve, my favourite American Apparel hoodie and when a girl in university stole my copy of Mean Girls. 

Letting go of people and things you were emotionally invested in over however long a period of time requires a certain amount of concentrated effort. It takes maturity, self-assurance and definitely does not take tweeting over-dramatic and passive-agressive things with grammatically incorrect hashtags.

I understand that people deal with grief and loss of friendships in their own way. But I also understand that friendships come and go and it is the people who you can tolerate (and who can tolerate you) through the good and the bad who truly matter. 

It’s the people who don’t tweet mean (and incredibly stupid) things to purposely hurt your feelings, who don’t text you 1000 times in a row telling you how shitty you are, who don’t love you one second and hate you the next, and who don’t suck out every single last bit of sympathy and respect you ever had for them who really matter.  

But then again, some people are just… 

I’ve never been the type to easily forget people. I’ve also never been the type that wasn’t at least a little bit hurt when friendships fell out of touch or ended. I’ve valued each friendship I’ve had for the face value it was worth because no matter what, each friendship come and gone has contributed to who I am as a person.

But there are times when I stop and question what in god’s name I was thinking when I decided to let certain people into my life. 

And why I ever kept the dirty little secrets they’d never want anyone to find out… 

As far as letting go goes, I’ve done my fair share of it. And I can say without question, I’m not ashamed of how I’ve handled any of it. Sure, I’ve been stuck in the limbo, clinging to the past, desperately hoping that when I open my eyes, everything will be how it used to be; how I’m used to it being. But that’s not real life.

Real life is putting one foot in front of the other, willing life to throw everything at you it can think of and choosing to not fall down. 

Letting go is part of growing up. And unfortunately, some people just aren’t there yet.