This pain is familiar. All too familiar, if I’m being honest with myself. I know it well, and I truly should have seen it coming. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that they all leave before they ever go. We feel that cold distance before the separation arrives.
The eyes that don’t quite meet our own. The faded intimacy. The missed phone calls and absent messages. The shift that we can feel but cannot quite articulate. Going, going, long before they’re gone.
The disconnection is understandable in a way. They need the space to make the necessary decisions that lie ahead. They can’t possibly leave us without first severing that attachment bit by bit, sawing away at any remaining warmth until it’s hanging by such a fragile thread that leaving becomes easy. Or easier, at the very least.
I often wish I had that level of self-preservation to be the one to hack away at the bonds in an attempt to save myself from heartache, but I usually find myself on the other side of it. I’ve been the one who has experienced that slow, quiet quitting while I hang on desperately to that thread of connection. I’m the one who sees all the signs long before events unfold.
It would be empowering were it not for the desire to hold on. Instead of seeing what will be and moving to act, I freeze. I’m stuck there in the in-between, feeling the pain and waiting for it all at the same time. There is no clean break because I can feel all the little cracks before the final snap of tension.
Over time, trauma therapy helped me to thaw. Instead of staying in that disempowered, frozen state, I developed the courage to make moves of my own — to see the leaving coming and refuse to participate in my own destruction. I got better at noticing the signs long before feelings could attempt to grow on arid, unforgiving soil.
Disconnection doesn’t impact me in quite the same way as it once did. Bonds can either be repaired and strengthened, or they can be broken. I stopped being the person trying to singlehandedly repair connections that someone else was breaking. I stopped trying to hold everything together with the force of my will, or my love.
I’ve learned a few things that have helped me deal with the detachment that comes before the true separation. Learning these lessons certainly wasn’t pretty, but the cruelty made me stronger. I’d like to think it made me kinder, too.
Life Lessons on Leaving
- When they want to leave, let them go. They’re going anyway.
- Don’t fight for someone who is unwilling to fight for you.
- Recognize the signs of someone who is always leaving, heading for someone or somewhere else. Let them find someone else to break. Don’t ask that they first break you.
- Know that resistance will only make the pain worse. Understand the end is here, not near. Be the one to let go and walk away with dignity.
- Don’t become a person who leaves before actually leaving. Be a person of integrity who attempts to resolve the problems or is brave enough to sever the connection without first creating distance.
- Feel the pain. Don’t ignore it. Don’t pretend it isn’t there. Don’t explain it away with intellectual arguments. Just feel all your feelings. They will pass. They will pass. They will pass.
- Love again. Love with everything you have. Love even though they can always leave. Love because it’s worth it. Love because you were born to do it. Love because life is short, and time is long, and you were meant to feel everything.
I’m still working on that last one. The desire to love again wars with the pain of having loved and suffered that slow, terrible leaving. I’m learning to move at my own pace. I’m open to love even as everything within me quakes at the risk of it. But it would hardly be brave if the fear did not exist.
Some people leave before they ever go, and that’s the truth of it. We cannot change their minds or show them that what they see as a kindness is just another kind of cruelty. The distance doesn’t help us detach. It only makes us feel abandoned by the one person we most feel we should be able to count on. The distance isn’t a kindness to us but a way to shirk the responsibility and weight of leaving. We’re the ones who end up carrying it.
The feeling is familiar. I let the feelings come, and I sit with them. I let the awareness settle, and this time, I won’t stay frozen. I won’t sit back to watch and wait. I am capable of seeing the truth and making a change. I am that brave.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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