relationships

Song of the week: “Relationships” by HAIM

This week I’ve been bumping "Relationships” by HAIM and boy is that song #relatable. I love the lyrics and recently it’s had me do a lot of inner reflection on my own relationships, romantic or not.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend time with my lovely friend Maeve. Maeve and I went to high school together, but funnily enough it wasn’t until after graduating high school that we started to become close friends. It’s weird how a lot of the time things seem to work that way.

While standing in my grandparents’ kitchen, getting ready to sit and eat lunch by their backyard pool, we started talking about how crazy it is that we were never close in high school. Maeve said she wished she had gotten to know me sooner because she really liked spending time with me and it made me reflect on how grateful I am for our friendship now.

I think that a lot of the time people come into our lives for a reason. I’m not particularly religious or spiritual so I’m not attributing this to a god or universe or fate or anything, but what I mean by that is it just so happened to appear because of the right circumstances in life. In high school, I don’t know if Maeve and I would have been friends, even if we were less intimated of each other. I once told Maeve that when we were in high school I thought she was so sweet and interesting but “too cool” to be my friend. She said that at the time she felt something similar. Even if we had not both thought that way I think we were both so involved in our our lives and friend groups in high school that we still wouldn’t have been friends. Graduating high school gave us time to say goodbye to some old friends and find new ones, in a period of such intense change in our lives. I think becoming close friends with Maeve happened because it was meant to at this point in out lives right now. We we were both open to it, and we both needed it.

I’ve been trying to view many of my other friendships and relationships in the same light. Within the past year and a half I have had to let go of a lot of meaningful connections. While sometimes it might feel like the right thing to do or sometimes it might be out of your control, it doesn’t make saying goodbye hurt any less. It can be fucking hard to know that you know so much information about a person that you don’t need to know anymore. What do you do with that information? For me, it can feel pointless to know the smell of the perfume my old friends wore, the sound of my first love’s laugh, addresses and birthdays and favorite colors. It makes me sad to know that people I once loved so dearly are not in my life anymore. Poeple I once knew so well, now unknown.

But like Maeve, who has come into my life unexpectedly, or my college friends who have brought me so much joy by entering my life, it happened because it was meant to be. If people drift apart, it was meant to be. Rather than trying to hold on tight to all my close relationships to make sure they don’t go anywhere, I’m going to try and let go a little. I want them to change and grow naturally, in the way they want to. Like the saying goes, sometimes people are only in our lifes for a season, sometimes a reason, and maybe even both at the same time. Poeple are constantly changing. Relationships change. I want to work on being less anxious about my relationships with others. I wan to live with less attachments, to be be freer and to let life run its own course, even if it runs right over me. Plus, it summer and I just want to enjoy myself when spending time with friends!!!

xo,

gaby