Are we allowed to walk away?
The lost art of letting things end
Welcome to my little corner of the internet! I’m so glad you’re here. Below you’ll find some of my recent thoughts on regret and the (un)natural prolonging of relationships.
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Occasionally I open up a social media app I haven’t visited in a while. What brings me there are memes or silly videos that someone has sent me.
What drives me away are the ghosts.
I’m not great at keeping up with people: friends, family, folks who are somewhere in-between.
Don’t get me wrong; I love connecting with people. Or rather I should say that I love when that connection has occurred. But I’m bad at establishing and maintaining that connection.
So when I log into Instagram or Facebook or whatever for the first time in two years, I’m greeted by regrets. Posts from aunts and uncles who love me but don’t know what my kids look like because I don’t post pictures of them online. Friend requests from 4 years ago from childhood friends. Videos from that guy who made me a groomsman in his wedding and then called me for advice during his divorce.
I scroll for a few minutes, overwhelmed by the immensity of the relationships that I’ve allowed to wither. Then I close the app again for another year or two.
What would it look like to allow myself to actually come to terms with the ending (or at least the changing) of a relationship? Didn’t that used to happen before the internet? You move away from your hometown, you (or your friend) gets married, and you move on with your life?
But these social media platforms, these digital triage units, keep relationships in a weird in-between state. I wish I was better at either engaging or saying goodbye.
These thoughts came up due to a podcast I listened to recently with a poet named David Whyte. During the conversation he read one of his poems called “Regret”.
Here’s an excerpt:
To admit regret is to understand we are fallible: that there are powers in the world beyond us: to admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present; and yet strangely, to admit sincere and abiding regret is one of our greatest but unspoken contemporary sins.
This one hit me hard, in (apparently) secret places that I’d neglected. My heart asked permission to cry when he finished. I refused of course; not quite ready for that dam to break. But it brought up my complicated relationship with feeling guilty about what should be the natural ebb and flow of relationships, and how those tides are locked in place by status updates, likes, and friend requests.
I don’t have any answers yet. Just thoughts and regrets. And maybe that’s an ok place to start.
P.S. I’ll be posting the first part of a new serialized short story this Friday. I’ve given myself the last month or two off to recharge and refocus a bit. Thanks for sticking around; I hope you wont regret it 😉
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