The Upside to Letting Go

In the past week, I have had to learn a great deal about letting go. I have had to learn that some circumstances, no matter how happy we think they make us, are really just tearing us apart.

I have to take a hard look at myself and where I want to be and had a huge realisation that I am nowhere near that goal. I soon found that there are a lot of things I am holding on to that are not helping me move on with my life. From that 10 year old diary that has the mutterings of a 15 year old to that book I bought on sale for R15 that I am never going to read! I think I have read more pages of my 15 year old diary than I ever did of that book. I read through the pages of this diary and realised that although my ability to write had improved (thank the gods for that!), my ability to let go of negative emotions had not improved one bit. I still have nightmares about the same things, I still resent the same bad points in my life and I still feel the same negative way about my self.

I always thought that being a highly emotional being was an added bonus, a gift from God and something to be cherished. Now I realise a gift is only a gift when you master control over it. I let other people's emotions and other people's stories control me and I let this all get into my head and affect how I feel. I let your story of your house flooding influence how I am going to feel when my house floods. I am a learner, not a pioneer. It saddened me to admit that. It hurt me to think about my gifts and how I had let them master me instead of me being the master. I realised this week that something needed to give. I needed to learn to let go of the things that did not affect me, let go of the things that were affecting me way too much and let go of the negative thoughts that I have been housing in my head since I was a little girl.

I am still learning, day by day I have to tell myself that this is the way forward for me. I need to look ahead and not look back. I know that sometimes letting go is the absolute sign of strength. It is not giving up, it is not sighing into the sunset and hoping for better days, it is having the wisdom to decide what is worth sighing over and what needs to be thrown into the ocean and never given another moment's thought.

Sadly, this has meant letting go of people that meant the world to me. I realised that they were dragging me down and distracting me from realising my true potential. I am not cut throat and I am not harsh. I am just choosing to put my sanity above my love for you. I started to think about the thin line between determination and desperation. Praying day in and day out that the person will change and that they will let go of the their hurt. Praying every day that they will choose to get better and not wallow in the past. Praying every day that they will catch a wake up call and realise the people that were with them all along are the people that matter. A sure sign of madness is doing the same thing every day and getting the same result when all you want is something different. That is when desperation sets in. When you drive yourself insane for this person's happiness. When you lend yourself to the fancies of another human being when it goes against every grain of your own wishes, wants and desires. You might think that you are hanging in there with the determination of a ox but you are just a stubborn mule who cannot see how desperate they look.

Sometimes letting go is really loving. Truly understanding that this is not what you are meant to have in life. You were not meant to have it. It is sometimes as simple and as complex as that. I know now that I was not meant to have you, just like some people were not meant to have me and that is why they let me go. I can choose to be hurt about it or I can choose to do better with the next person. I chose to selfishly focus on myself just like you chose to selfishly do that first. I don't blame you, I don't begrudge you and I don't hurt from you. I learn from you. I take control and I take one step forward at a time until looking back is not even a finite option. Look at you, look how much better you are without me making you love me. Look how much better we are at this distance thing than we thought. Maybe one day we will reconnect, maybe one day our souls will match up like jigsaw pieces again but if today is not that day, I am going to muster up the courage to say, "Not today". I have done so much for everyone else that the only logical step now is to stop, take a well deserved break and fix myself. Maybe someone will even come along and help me fix myself but I am never going to pay attention to them if I am putting my focus into someone else.

So now it is time for me. Time for the self. Time for letting go.

10 Things Your Single Friends are Tired of Hearing - My Rebuttal

Fueled by a post by Constantly Effed, I decided to write a reply to all of you single folk about why we say the things we do and what irritates us about the things that you say about being single.

1.“You’ll find it when you aren’t looking!”

Guess what? Sometimes it really does happen when you stop trying so hard to look for it! I spent a year pining away for what my friends had. I would whinge and whine about not finding the perfect thing for me and as soon as I accepted that it wasn't going to happen, I was rolling in offers from every Tom, Dick and Harry. It isn't a set thing that it will come when you aren't looking for it, but sometimes when you start making other things your priority, an opportunity for a relationship will sneak up and surprise you and this is the best way for it to happen! No one wants to plan love, sometimes the best love is the love that falls out of the sky and bowls you over.

2. “You can’t be happy in a relationship unless you’re happy with yourself first.”

This may annoy you, but it is true. How can you give everything of yourself to someone without knowing solidly who you are first? You will never be happy in a relationship until you learn to love yourself more and learn exactly what you deserve and what you can do without. Sometimes this is learned through trial and error but sometimes when you learn all of this before you get into a relationship...this is when you have the perfect relationship, because you know what you deserve and therefore what you want out of a relationship.

3. “You’re still young, you have all the time in the world.”

If someone is saying this to you, it means you ARE young and you DO have all of the time in the world. What is the point in wasting your time in a relationship when it could be going nowhere? Get out, live a little and if you are lucky you will find the person that completely suits you. This may be the person who is just as much of an adrenaline junkie as you are. You may find your person while you are busy finding yourself and then GOOD FOR YOU. But if you haven't found your person yet, then it really does mean that you have more time to do shit for yourself. I do agree with you on one thing, age has nothing to do it, it is about you being ready or not.

4. “You deserve someone who wants to give you everything.”

If someone is saying this to you, then it means that they think you deserve everything. They are not saying it to make you feel better, they are saying it because they think you are incredibly special and they want you to have the world. If we could give you what you want and make you happy then we would but we can't so all we can say is this pissy sentiment that you DO deserve better than you have ever got and hopefully one day it will sink in and you will look for a person who can give you everything.

5.  “You’re looking in the wrong places.”

Ok, you are allowed to be mad at this one. I have no excuse for the idiot who can say anything above and says this instead.

6. "You should try online dating!”

We are basically saying that you should try anything other than sit on our couch and whine that you are single and don't want to be. We are trying to give you solutions to your predicament, we are not trying to piss you off. We just don't know if this is an avenue you have tried yet and don't knock it til you try it.

7. “You’re too picky.” 

Like I said for number 5, this person is an idiot, and probably not your friend. So do yourself a favour and stop talking to them about your relationship woes.

8. “Oh hey, but also, never settle.”

NEVER SETTLE! Never ever settle for anything less than anything that will make you absolutely and completely happy. You deserve to be perfectly happy. You deserve to reach for the stars and have them come to you. You deserve the sun and the moon and the stars and the person that you deserve will think that you are their sun and moon and stars. Never f**king settle.

9. “You need to put yourself out there more.”

We are saying that you are quiet, we are saying that when we all go out, you sit there and talk to us. We are saying that when the bartender says "It's on the house" and winks, all you do is walk away and say, "Score, free drink!". We are saying that your ideal night out is game night with all of your couple friends and this is not going to change your life in the way that you want it to. Listen, accept and adapt people! Get out more, make some single friends, talk to strangers (not creepy strangers) and find people that interest you.

10.  “I’m Engaged!” 

Be happy for me you sourpuss. Otherwise you aren't really my friend either.

Tired tired tired and sick sick sick

There are only so many mistakes you can watch someone make before you give up and go your own way. There are only so many times you can bail your friends out of sticky situations and only so many times you can deal with their garbage for them. There are special circumstances where you should be granted a “get out of helping a douche for free” card. There are moments when you need to look back on the situation as an outsider and say to yourself that you are worth more than to be the prince charming for someone else all the time. I was that person who always helped every living soul that needed help until I was also the person having panic attacks because my own life was falling apart and no one was helping me fix my problems. At the end of the day if you surround yourself with people that constantly expect you to solve their shitty lives then you are going to have friends who cant help you with your life because they cant even fix their own. You are what you eat people, if you choose to consume the bull that you are fed then expect that bull to follow through in every other inch of your life.

I say this quite often but obviously I don’t feel like it is said often enough: You need to take control of your own life. If you are constantly flinging responsibility around then you are going to forget who you are and what you are capable of. We need a world full of people that take responsibility for themselves. We need to live in a world where we do not need to look out for every one else’s actions but only our own. If you don’t have one needy friend then I have some bad news, the needy friend is you. There is one in every group just like there is one in every family. You need to let this person land on their own two feet, if they don’t land correctly they will stand up and learn that next time they should lift their arms before impact or bend their knees a little more. Life is all about learning, we start off as blank canvasses and slowly we add the lines and colour. If someone is constantly using your brushes and your paints, you are going to end up with nothing for your own canvas and they are going to end up being the person you were meant to become with all of the colours you were meant to have. It is about time we all started putting ourselves before everyone else just a little bit at a time. I am not saying that we should be completely selfish because this is not what being human is all about but don’t go to the extreme where you are so involved in fixing someone else that there is no energy or time left to fix yourself.

Maybe I am a bit of a hypocrite because there was a point in my life where everything was falling apart and all I needed was a helping hand that I never got from anyone else. I am not going to lie, this made me feel a little bit resentful of the people I chose to surround myself with but at the end of the day: digging myself out of that hole was more rewarding than if I had had a crutch helping me through everything. I think that we are given obstacles for a reason and if you choose to let the obstacles build up instead of taking them head on and fixing them then you cant expect anyone else to take on your problems either. We all need a helping hand every now and then but when I give you my hand, I don’t mean that you have rights to take my entire arm. Are we all adults now? Can we all take our life into our own hands and be our own salvation? We all have cause to make our lives better so why do we not start doing it for ourselves? Let us all be highly effective people and change our own lives for the better so that no one else has to drop their own issues and save us from drowning in our own crud.

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/7942767/?claim=u5zave684hu">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Do you like the person you’ve become?

I never understood how people could have a fight and instantaneously they hate each other. I have seen best friends torn apart over one little argument. Did you not realize that you didn’t agree on certain things when you became friends? How do you stay friends with someone for years and over one petty fight fuelled by jealousy and greed you decide that person is not worth being in your life anymore?

I have taken countless amounts of abuse from some people and I stick around because I think that I can’t possibly give up that easily, can I? I wonder how it is decided when a friendship ends? How is this designated as the end? I have two friends who had been friends for about 7 years, met in high school and never looked back, now they don’t talk and they refuse to suck up their pride and try to talk. It saddens me because I feel that the reason they fought was a silly reason to fight but females are silly and that is what we do. We yell when talking is enough. We hurt someone when accepting their confession of guilt is enough. We cry when walking away is enough.

The human race are a bunch of drama queens that extend their hands of friendship to every soul that they meet but withdraw their hand just as quickly when the going gets tough. Here is thought, why don’t you decide that this is a lifetime commitment when you make the connection with this person? Remain calm and quiet. Stick your feelers out there and decide whether this person is someone you can trust, it is not that hard. Here is another thought, when you have your first fight, don’t walk away. People do not get divorced over one fight; it is not that easy to let go of someone unless they never meant a thing to you in the first place. Why cant you just commit to making it work? I mean you don’t need to be their “everything”, you don’t need to be the be all and end all to this person, but if you cannot be nice, the least you could do is to not be ugly. If you cannot help their life in any way and you cannot enrich their being then by all means do not try. You also need to commit to not making anything worse, to not damaging them in any way and to not offering them empty promises.

Be a human being and realize that there are billions of us on this planet all fighting for the same thing. To be happy. If you aren’t happy then continue on your journey to be happy. If you are happy then find someone who isn’t and help him or her. If we were meant to be selfish then God would have put one person on this planet and only one. If we were meant to wreck all that we have then God would have left us with nothing. If we were meant to feel hate so easily then God would never have given us the ability to love. Yes, loving is hard, but hate ruins your soul and makes you just as tired. Loving someone is sometimes easier because it can be done from a distance, hate may start from a distance but it almost always ends up consuming you.

So step one, figure out if this new friendship is going to work for you. If not then move on quickly and quietly. If it does work for you then never let it go over something silly. If it doesn’t work for you then decide then and there that you will never cast a bad stone near them. You will just let them alone to be a human, like you, and find happiness somewhere else. If they are mean to you then accept the hurt and move on. Don’t assume that they need some hurt hurled back at them. You are going to inevitably ask yourself in twenty years, “Do you like the person you’ve become?” Do you really want that answer to be no?

When did everyone decide that settling was better?

It is like in the past five years of my life, humans have decided that being comfortable is better than being happy. I know of people who stay in a relationship because they don’t want to know what life is like for people who are alone. I don’t get it. I would rather be alone, a little bit sad and knowing that my life was going to be better. I would rather feel sorry for myself for a little while than be miserable in a relationship that is not working.

I understand that it is tough. I understand that you feel like you are going to enter the big wide world and not know where you fit or who will ever love you again. I understand that it is scary as all hell facing the fact that if it all ends that you will be alone but the truth is that we are never alone. You have a family, you have friends, you sometimes have the voices in your head and you have a million other strangers to meet in your lifetime. The world is getting fuller every single day. My friend read a statistic out loud the other day that 80% of the world has already met the person that they are going to marry by the time they are 16 years old. Well if this may be a bunch of bull but if this is the case, then 80% of us have no cause to worry and the other 20% need to be patient, it cant be long now right?

If all of your friends have boyfriends and you are scared to be alone then I have an important announcement for you: Your friends do not care if you are single or not. They only care that you stick around and sometimes go on outings with them. No one is going to consider you a leper because you have lost your ball and chain. If you are happy then they should be happy for you too. It will be gross being surrounded by love while you are throwing your “pity me” parties but at the end of the day we don’t all get to go through the same stages of life together. When you eventually find the love of your life, they may be married and trying to rekindle that old flame, they may even be alone where you once were and need the loving support of their friend who went through the same thing.

If you are scared because of financial implications, this is not a tough one, start making arrangements! Start finding that cheaper condo, start taking the bus or the train to save on fuel; you can buy fewer shoes so that you can afford your own furniture. You always have a way out, even if that way out is a less glamorous out than the life you are used to, it is still a way out so seize it! Some people have parents who will bail them out, some people have siblings who will bail them out and some people even have friends who will bail them out. If you are not a completely despicable person, there will always be someone willing to help you. If you happen to be a completely despicable person and no one will help you, there is this beautiful thing that comes with being an adult, it is called responsibility. You are responsible for your own life and you can take control and bail yourself out.

If you are staying in a relationship because you think that your partner cannot live without you; that is just insulting. Let them be alone, they might just surprise you. I know how hard it is to accept that maybe they will move on without you but this is the nature of the world. It moves on. It keeps spinning. We don’t all drop dead when a relationship ends.

I am the expert when it comes to staying in a relationship long past its due date and I can tell you right now: it never ended with me on top of the world. I stayed and got cheated on. I stayed and got heartbroken; even though I was so relieved it was finally over. I stayed even though I knew it was done, and then I got blindsided by him not wanting to stay anymore. If there is even an inkling of a feeling that it is not working in your favour anymore, then get the hell out. The only good thing that ever comes from something getting worse first before it got better is probably alcohol, antibiotics and cheese. Nothing else, ever! One day you are going to look back on your five year long relationship and say to yourself, “At two years I already knew this was a waste of my time, so why did I waste even more of my life?” and then you know what will happen? Your proverbial inner being will hang its head in shame and move on. Just like it would have three years before it will move on.

Yes being rejected is sad. Knowing that you failed at something is shameful. Being the lonely one again is an awful thought. But be brave! The best thing about a breakup is that it does not kill you, it teaches you what you never want to experience again. It teaches you what you will never do to another human being again. It teaches you how to hang onto certain things and let the less important things go. You are holding onto a bar that is being pulled away from you, the eventuality is that you are going to lose your grip and go flying. Retain your dignity, plant your feet firmly on the ground and let go. Just let go.

Single vs. Relationship

I have always been the girl in the relationship. There was a brief period when I was 20 years old when I did not have a boyfriend. When I say brief I mean that it was brief in relation to the 3-year relationship I had just ended. When I was twenty years old I took a break from relationships by being single for an entire year before I decided I was ready to give it a go again. In this time I saw my best friends, I partied with my single friends and I went to civilised dinners with my partnered friends. It is important to note that when I was single my two best friends were in very committed relationships. This being the case the times that I did see them, we would always include the boyfriend in on our plans.

This gives you some background information into why I am about to gripe in this post. I cannot stand the fact that none of my friends feel comfortable enough to go out with couples when they are single. No one cares that you are single. No one cares that you are alone. Half of us are jealous that you are a free spirit and do not have to factor anyone into your plans. When I was single I never looked at my friends and thought, “ah I want to be you”. I was just concentrating on being me and more importantly I was figuring out who “me” was exactly. I knew that the only way I was going to figure that out was to see as many people and do as many things as possible. No one is going to throw you a pity party because you are single, you should be loving the life that you are given.

In the time that I was single I figured out exactly how I did not want to be in my next relationship and exactly why my previous relationship had failed. In this time I learnt that I liked drinking whiskey and that I rather enjoyed playing 30 seconds in a big group of people. In this time I lived, laughed and loved more people than I ever would have if I were holed up in an apartment with my boyfriend. I did not avoid the people who were happily coupled up, I did not feel awkward spending a night with just one couple. Yes I was a third wheel but man how I loved spending time with my friends and that was the only thing that mattered to me.

I don’t understand why there are sides. Singles vs. Those in a relationship. We are all humans, we all enjoy the same things, and just because that boy and girl kiss occasionally it shouldn’t change how you feel about them as people. If it is that easy for you to write someone off because they have a boyfriend and you don’t, then they were never your friends in the first place. If you feel so uncomfortable around couples that it drives you to avoid them, then you are uncomfortable with yourself and not with the couple. Stop blaming your circumstances on the people who surround you and start taking ownership for your own actions. Try having a game night with only couples; they are only humans at the end of the day. It is really not that scary stepping out of your comfort zone and no one is ever going to make you feel uncomfortable, if they do, then they are not your friends.

I don’t want to feel like I cannot see my friend at my house because she is afraid that my boyfriend and I will make out in front of her. I am not twelve, I do not need to kiss my boyfriend all of the time and I am sure I can wait until you are safely driving yourself home. I would hate to think that if the roles were reversed, everything you think I would do now, is maybe what you would do to me. It all boils down to how afraid you are of being alone. How comfortable are you in your own skin? If you love yourself, you won’t mind that other people are in love with each other in front of you. I am not saying that I am condoning public displays of affection but just hanging out with a couple will not give you cooties.

Please ladies, I am sure that boys do not have the same issues, and this is because they think logically and not emotionally. Lets all just focus on our own being and not on everybody else’s.

You are angry? I am sorry I did not notice with the sparks of spit flying out of your mouth

I work in a restaurant in my spare time away from my proper day job and it always amazes me when I think about the type of people I come across. I have always been a waitress from the age of 16. I really do believe that it is the perfect environment to give someone skin as thick as a rhino’s. The restaurant I work in is fine dining and I wish I could say that it is more glamorous than any other restaurant but most of the time you get the same calibre of people as an ordinary family restaurant. You still get people booking for four adults and arriving with two children instead, you get people who get too drunk and cause scenes and you get people who have no idea how to behave in a public setting. I can tolerate all three of these types but there is one type that I cannot stand. We get a lot of this type. It is the person who complains about his steak and then rips the entire restaurant to shreds because his medium rare was not rare enough for his tastes.

This is why I have a problem with this person. They have no idea how it feels to be on the receiving end of that abuse. You want to say that my manager should not have the job he does and you want to say that my colleague is not a waitron he is a salesman then fine but the minute you start turning to other tables and asking them if they are having as bad a time as you are, that is when I would personally like to shove my foot in your smug mouth.

I do not know where and when humans started getting the idea that we are all entitled to make other beings feel less important than we are. I do not know when the activity of the day became a game of “bash the little person. “ Yes I am poorer than you, yes I am younger than you and yes I am working for you for the evening but the minute you make me feel like I do not matter when I have lovingly taken your order, when the chef has lovingly cooked it and when I have again lovingly brought it out to you, show me a little bit of love and do not mock the way I have put your plate down for you or that plate is sure to be in your lap next time. I do not come into work to be an idiot and by all means if you think that I am being an idiot then make it known, but in a mature and orderly manner, do not make me regret that I have a minute of patience left for people like you.

This does not just happen in restaurants. It happens in every day life. I get people who have so much rage in them and practice it when they are driving on the road. I have seen people yell at vagrants for asking for money. I have been called a “Jew” because I had no money to give. How did the world get to the point that ugliness is better than chivalry? Is it really easier to proverbially spit in someone’s face rather than smile and walk away with dignity and just never depend on that person again? Does it make you feel better to smack someone down instead of explaining why you are as upset as you are? I don’t deserve to be yelled at because your boss-hole yelled at you this morning, and I am sure you didn’t need to be yelled at by your boss-hole because his wife yelled at him on his way to work. Bad moods are so infectious, I can catch one in an instant, all I need is a spark to light the flame.

We all need to practice a little inch of tolerance and maybe then humans would be a great deal happier with their remaining days on Earth.