I’ve been doing this thing recently where I find myself experiencing really intense moments of sentiment, leaving me confused and vulnerable. I’ll be walking down the road, and BAM, I walk past someone with a familiar smell and my whole body gets nauseas. I’m not kidding, I literally want to fall over. Here’s the thing: I know that I am a sentimental person. I know that I find meaning in a puddle or look; I am convinced that the mean girl at the checkout hates me because of how she said, “We’re closed.” But here’s the catch: I also know that I have panic disorder and obsessive compulsive anxiety. SO, there’s definitely a correlation. The key, is finding that correlation and allowing myself to just let go. Which is a whole new story. More on that later.
I’m the kind of person that finds quotes that mean something to me and I want to show everyone. Two weeks ago, I was making my way back from an amazing road trip to California. We spent a week, just us girls, exploring California and having a multitude of conversations ranging from really sad and reflective, to incredibly hilarious. I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed so hard in such a short amount of time. [#HAAK2k15 forever, am I right ladies?] So on the drive back, I started getting incredibly anxious because I was afraid that when I got back, my depression and anxiety would come creeping back in and I wouldn’t be able to get a handle on it the way I had been all week. I started thinking about friendships and words passed between myself and someone I still hold dear to my heart, and all of a sudden I was taking this large amount of sentiment and allowing it to overwhelm me. Which leads me to the next part of my adventure with sentiment, letting go.
Before I continue on, I need to preface this paragraph with a few things. I love people easily. Blame it on me being an Aries, my parent’s divorce [cue buzzfeed article about how children of divorce love differently], or anything you want, but it still remains true. I genuinely love with an ease that comes back to hurt me sometimes. I’m also very passionate and tenacious, meaning I don’t give up easily, especially on people. I can’t even count on my hands the amount of times I’ve fought for someone who wouldn’t/didn’t fight for me, but I don’t look back and regret the love I felt. If anything, I look back and wonder how I could have loved them from a distance; how I could have loved them without losing bits and pieces of myself. Okay, so let’s dive back in.
So here I am, driving back [27 hours, hollllla], and I’m paralyzed with fear. What will happen when I see that person? What will happen if that person hooks up with someone I adore? What will happen if I can’t let go? What will happen….what will happen? All of these things are coursing through my mind, and I’m not even back in Austin! But that’s when something crazy awesome happened. I was on instagram in the “explore” section, and I saw a quote, so I pulled it up. The quote read, “In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.” I find this quote to be powerful in lots of ways, and it’s been instrumental in my personal growth over the last two weeks. If you break it down, it makes sense of sentiment and loss all in one. In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, meaning we have to accept that what we shared with someone, what happened to us, etc., indeed happened and means just as much as we hope it did, and why we no longer need to feel it. So yes, what happened and what we experienced was just as magical and genuine as we felt it to be, but since it no longer is [for whatever expected or unexpected reason], we can let it go. We don’t have to keep holding onto something for fear of it disappearing or losing it’s meaning.
Just because we may feel devalued doesn’t mean that we actually are. In actuality, we probably feel devalued because we know what it was like when we were valued. As difficult as it is to let go of something we love and still care about, it’s really important to recognize that we aren’t losing it just because it’s out of sight. Feeling devalued doesn’t diminish or cancel out the good experiences we have.
So here’s a small bit of rambling from my end, mostly to remind myself that it’s okay to feel passion and sentiment, as long as we don’t let those feelings disregard our happiness. I deserve to be happy and so do you.
P.s. Buzzfeed articles are way to relevant and might need to go away.
Dear Girl, 