It’s always a good time to look inward and evaluate the things that serve us and the things that hold us back.

I have always been a deeply ambitious person. Since I was in third grade, I’ve known that I want to be a writer. I spent most of my teenage years thinking up really terrible plots for books and writing down the outlines. I wrote poems and short stories constantly. I read voraciously. I intend to maintain these practices throughout the rest of my life because, while I have been published and continue to be on a micro scale, I still intend to write “like I’m running out of time,” to quote the musical Hamilton. I intend to be a renowned poet. I intend to write speculative fiction that represents queer and mentally ill communities. I intend to write nonfiction. I’m going to give my all to my writing, regardless of the outcomes.

But beyond that, like I said in my previous post, I want to rewrite how I see myself.

I want to believe and accept that I am enough.

I want to believe and accept that I am lovable as I am.

I want to believe and accept that I did what I could.

I want to believe and accept that I can get my needs met.

I want to believe and accept that I will survive.

I want to believe and accept what I feel and know deep down, underneath the wounds that have built up the self-doubt, the self-silencing, the self-minimization. Because it’s one thing to know my value. It’s another thing entirely to feel it, believe it, and accept it. I can count on one hand the number of relationships and friendships I’ve had that haven’t made me feel as though I had to earn my place in their life. Those friendships are still active in my life and are some of the truest, deepest, most mutually caring relationships of my life.

Not every lost relationship is a bad thing. Some connections are meant for only a season. Some connections are meant to help push us into a place of growth. Some connections are meant to teach us a lot about ourselves. There aren’t any personal connections I’ve had that I regret, except for maybe my marriage. Because even in the most painful, disappointing, and confusing losses, there has been beauty, too. I’ve made the choice to cut some people out of my life without warning or explanation. I did this for the first time after I left my ex. I didn’t want to explain the breakdown of my marriage. I didn’t want to face their doubt, their disbelief. And perhaps they deserved at least a chance to surpass my expectations, but I didn’t owe that to them, either. No one owes me friendship, and vice versa. And after I left my ex, I wanted to build a different life, a new life, a better life than the one I had been living for ten years.

That meant letting go of some long term friendships that had been fading for quite some time. Because honestly, I think most friendships have end-dates. As people we simply change too much (or not enough) as time goes on to maintain strong connections with extended groups of people. Our interests, values, beliefs, goals, and trajectories change. Our physical locations change. The things we want from life and from friendship change. And that’s okay. I think holding on to connections long after we should let go is one reason why connections can turn toxic.

Things I hope to never do again are 1) hold on too long, and 2) put others needs before my own. I’ve seen people I love do this, and I’ve watched as I have done this over and over and it always ends badly. While I would never go so far as to say that caring for people is a bad thing, I think there is a such thing as caring too much. Any connection that makes you feel as though you have to shrink and walk on eggshells so you don’t piss off the other person is a connection that is not healthy. Codependency. Passive-Aggression. Manipulation. They’re destructive. Corrosive.

And I will not allow myself to erode.