Friendship is a weaving of many strands and colors through time, and whoever’s life threads you permit into your weaving will be the shelter and gifts you carry through your life. You let go of people when they tear apart the fabric of your life. Let go of them when they’re knives, cutting you away from the people who support you. Let go of them when they pretend to add their own thread of presence, but in the end there is no truth left behind, and the weaving you attempt with them collapses into tangled threads because you were the only one who was being honest. Leave the ones who attempt to make you weave to their pattern instead of your own, or who try to prevent other friendships from sharing your space and time. Leave when they weave like a spider to trap and consume you. For the rest, friends will weave in and out of your life depending on how your lives mesh. Letting people come and go allows you to have stronger networks of friendship than clinging on as though the friendship would not exist waiting for the next time you meet. Pulling too hard and knotting the strands to keep someone close when they need to be elsewhere can create tears and break the thread of relationship in ways that may not always be repairable.
There is always another potential friendship waiting to fill that gap and add something new to your life. Trusting that you can consistently build unique relationships with a variety of people helps you keep the structure of your friendships strong and warm even as the individual threads may change. Different people take their place in the pattern of your life, bringing their own color and texture with them. Sometimes they are there only for a moment or two, and sometimes they return again and again to share your path and shape a longer relationship of whatever quality you both create together. Your interwoven relationships will take on various textures depending on circumstances, sometimes close and tight, other times lighter and more delicate. They will not all be the same. Some will be warmer, some more decorative. Some will repair your torn places with you and others will will teach you the value of your presence in their lives. unless a relationship is disrespectful and abusive, it is always there even if the person who shares that element of your life is currently busy elsewhere, perhaps never to return. You can always look at the woven pattern that covers you, touch the moments you shared, and enjoy the beauty and color of their presence. Whatever you created together exists in your memory, and it is part of how you came to be where you are now. You don’t have to let go of people who are gone, and who have moved on to weave their colors with others. You can just let those threads remain out of your reach. They are set to the side while you focus on the ones who are with you now. That way, if they ever return for a visit, you can pick up that thread and discover where and how they fit amid the new relationship patterns you learned to weave with others while they were away. How do you know when to acknowledge that old threads are currently out of reach? When trying to keep them close starts snapping your connections instead of adding more. When you start losing your own pattern for trying to match theirs. When you feel like trapping them or keeping them away from the patterns they wish to weave without you. The only friendships you need to actively let go of are the ones that destroy your ability to create your own life pattern, sabotage your capacity for healthy relationships with themselves or others, and prevent you from exploring relationships with people who actively value your presence and have the capacity to share the patterns in your life right now. Take a look and realize that you have interests to explore, places to be, people to meet, and relationships with whom to connect. And it’s okay to to add new colors and textures to your life when the old patterns become destructive, strained, knotted, or threadbare. Maybe they will remain the past. It happens. But that’s not letting go. It’s just weaving separate lives.
You don’t have to let go, even if you move on to other friendships and interactions. It may surprise you how many remain strong and consistent for the rest of your life, even when you don’t struggle to hold them close. You can each leave and return again and again to add unique interactions in your own way and time, without expecting or predicting how that will happen. After all, there are many threads of friendship in your life, and will be many more in the future. Weaving them all close at once would be too much for anyone to handle. It’s a wonderful thing that we can all come and go and still be connected.
amandla
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
