love & loss

If you know anything about me, you know I preach that relationships are disgusting and I don't understand how people could spend so much time with someone without getting sick of them.  I've successfully steered clear of a romantic relationship for the past 19 years of my life!

Another thing about me, is that I give 10000% in friendships.  I love my friends.  I love to see them, chat with them, call them, text them, send them random Venmo's (the money is gonna be spent on something useless anyways might as well gift it away!).  In friendships I quite literally love until I can't anymore. I spend all my time with them, and don't get sick of them.  So why is a relationship so scary to me?

Well, I've realized that it isn't relationships that I despise and fear, it is the idea of them ending that makes me want to run for the hills (quite literally lol see you in Utah). 

I was reading a blog post by (my idol), Indy Blue where she wrote about how with boyfriends or significant others, you know that there are two outcomes - marriage or heartbreak,  but with friends you (she, I) go in expecting every one of your friends to be with you until you grow old, and that's why friendship endings arguably hit so much harder.  

This past semester, I went through a best friend breakup that broke me.  I was closer with her than I've ever been with anyone in my life, and to me - the ending seemed to come out of nowhere.  I felt like one day we were talking about laughing together at our 50th birthday parties, and the next day we weren't speaking.

It hurt so bad.  

There were times I wanted to hole up in my room and never come out.  I put on a face, for friends and family, but that "break-up" shattered me.  And it is only then, that I realized the fear I have of endings isn't reserved strictly for romantic relationships.  

But guess what! I survived.  

As I was mourning this friendship breakup, a time I often thought about was when I was sitting in my room sobbing crying over Yellowstone ending on approximately August 11th (I don't know why I'm lying to you guys obviously that isn't approximate, I literally checked a calendar), my sister Grace came into my room and said "you opened yourself up to love and with that you open yourself to pain and heartbreak".  At first I was confused, I HATE love!!! I didn't open myself up to it!!! 

But I did, and every day I do, with friends and family, and moving across the country to meet new people that I will inevitably also love.  And with love, I am in fact opening myself up to pain and heartbreak.  Because even though it isn't always a "break-up" or clear cut ending, there will come a time when your friends or family are hundreds of miles away and you can't be with them when you want, and that is another kind of pain.  

Avoiding romantic relationships doesn't mean avoiding heartbreak or pain.  Whether we like it or not, endings come all the time, sometimes when we least expect it, or when we know it's coming, yet that doesn't make it any easier.  When I was leaving Yellowstone I remember often recognizing that this would be the first time I would have to say goodbye to people and not know when or if I would see them again.  I knew it was the end, but that didn't make it any easier.  The pain and heartbreak was still there.  

I've spent a long time running from the pain that I thought these endings would bring, but now that it's happened, and I know that I can survive, I think it's true what The Lumineers' say,  "it's better to feel pain than nothing at all".   Because at the end of the day, no matter how hard that friendship breakup broke me, or how hard it was to leave Yellowstone, or leave my friends to move to Utah, I had the chance to love and cherish the time we did get to have together, and that makes the pain and the hard days of mourning worth it.