If you love something, let it go

I want to talk a bit this week about this most irritating saying and why although it is deeply frustrating, it is also full of truth and very necessary.

This saying used to really frustrate me something serious. It just never seemed to make any sense. "If I love something, why on earth should I let it go? Then it might leave and never come back, and then I'll lose it and be miserable and depressed and never find anything like it again, then I'll die! Screw it. I'm never going to let it go then. It'll stay here with me forever, where it's safe!"

It always seemed like a bit of a backwards theory to me. I had many things in my life that I held onto with an iron grip and just refused to let them go. People and relationships were a big issue for me when it came to this. I would literally hold onto people long after they wanted me to and would continue to try and resurrect friendships that were already dead - even people that I hadn't spoken to for years. No doubt I had a few people wondering to themselves - "Why on earth is Graham trying to contact me? I haven't spoken to him in over 5 years!"

I also used to put marriage and intimacy on an enormous pedestal when I was younger. I honestly saw it as the final solution to all of my problems and that if that was to just happen for me, I would be happy and never have to feel alone or afraid again because marriage was going to be perfect and full of love all the time, right? There was no such thing as problems and animosity in marriage, was there? My wife would complete me, right? All would be "happily ever after", right? Wrong.

I've never been married, of course. But my thoughts towards the subject - as well as the subject of relationships - have changed drastically over the last few years. I have realized that my obsessive need to hold onto people and never let them go came from a deeply withheld insecurity within my own life - and that my obsessive fantasies regarding marriage and intimacy stemmed from the exact same insecurity. In a sense - I wanted to use people as drugs to numb my feelings and block out my insecurities so that I wouldn't have to face them.

I now see that my insecurities would have actually turned marriage into a living hell, as eventually the honeymoon period would have worn off and my wife would lose the ability to "keep me medicated" so to speak whenever some kind of argument or anything rose up between us, which of course would inevitably happen. Then I'd realize I was stuck in a commitment with someone who could no longer help me to keep my insecurities contained, which would inevitably translate into depression.

This insecurity has already killed countless relationships in my life through my obsessive need to control the friendship and keep it alive no matter what, as well as obsessing over every minor detail and going into a panic mode if something didn't quite add up properly. Simply put - people would get tired of me. And who could blame them? I was tiring.

I have realized that if I want to truly be able to appreciate either a friend or a romantic relationship, I need to be able to come to a place of complete strength and wholeness within my own inner being, so that I can look upon others as people with flaws and insecurities like myself and not as drugs to be used to help me to block out my feelings. When I can look at a girl who really gets my heart racing - and yet remain strong enough in myself to be objective and able to be honest with her and myself about the relationship and whether or not I believe it will work, is when I will be far more able to appreciate it without building up a whole lot of unreasonable expectations which will no doubt destroy me (and her too).

If I can let her go - and truly accept that she may not come back if I do this, and be strong enough in myself to accept that as truth and be ready to completely move on without her if she doesn't come back - then I believe I will be ready to have a relationship which will truly bless both parties and won't turn a dream of mine into a nightmare.

I guess my message in all of this is that we need to be prepared to let go of the things that we love if we truly want to be able to appreciate them properly. I believe God wants us to stand strong on our own first, and once that has happened, we'll be able to see relationships properly and therefore be able to join our souls with another. So if you've battled with insecurity and it's affecting your relationships and turning you obsessive as it has done me - learn to deal with it before it turns your dreams into nightmares as it so often has done for mine.

Peace out, all.