30 Days of Truth, Day 10 ~ Someone You Need To Let Go, Or Wish You Didn't Know

Some of these questions are easier to answer than others, and this one goes into the easier category.

When I answered it the first time, my answer wasn't a whole lot different than it will be this time, but the reasoning was completely different.

What a difference a few years can make...


Day 10 ~ Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn't know

At the end of the day, the answer is the same as it was last time, which is essentially that no one fits that criteria.

The reasoning is different now, though.

Back then, I still firmly believed that everything happened for a reason and that I was intended to have each and every experience I did for the purpose of teaching me some lesson, whether it was obvious or elusive at the time.

I don't believe that anymore.

I don't know that I really believed it then, if I am being totally honest here. I know that I wanted to believe it, because it lends some comfort to life if you believe it all happens for a reason, whatever it may be.

Then the last three years unfolded the way that they did, and I learned the hard way that sometimes horrible things happen to people who do nothing to deserve them, that sometimes bad things just occur, that logic and reason often has nothing to do with any of it. I have learned that life's experiences aren't always limited by your ability to handle them, to manage them. PTSD taught me that the hard way. I couldn't process everything. I couldn't handle it. I've paid the price for that inability many times over. I'm working on undoing it all now. More likely than not, I will carry some of this for the rest of my life.

What I have learned in the last three years, even with all the hurt and pain, is that I have to protect myself because I can't count on anyone else to do it. I have to draw lines in the sand, I have to erect walls, I have to set boundaries. I have to keep myself safe.

Part of that means that I have needed to remove people from my life, and as much as it hurts when it has to happen, it's required for my survival and for my sanity.

I don't keep people around if they exist only to hurt me, to hurt those I love. Not anymore.

I've learned to let the bridges that should, burn.

If you're still here, there is a reason.

If you're not, there is one too.

There aren't people I wish I didn't know, regardless of the reasons others might give. I do still believe that each and every person we encounter in this life provides us with something - some anecdote, some wisdom, some lesson, some warning - the bad even more sometimes than the good. Without all of them, we wouldn't have the perspective we do, so I don't wish any of them away.