Letting Go

At times, I find that it's easier to let go than to keep the things that I once held so close. I remind myself that everything is temporary anyway. It's as if all of it was never worth anything to begin with. Sadly, that sort of thinking applies to the people in my life, too. I move through them so quickly, smile and laugh with them, and realize that I've either outgrown them or they've outgrown me. Rarely do I make attempts to hold onto them. I know that there are better people for all of those people, and I am not needed or significant in their lives. I was never particularly significant to begin with.
Of course, that kind of thinking is supposed to come full circle. If everyone has someone that they can stay with for a long time, an eternity that only they know, where are the people that I mesh with perfectly? Who do I look to when everything else is allowed to fall away? Where would such a person come from, and why would this person stay with me? For the longest time, I wondered if I was just wrong entirely in this worldview, and there was a better way to see things. Most people, after all, expend a lot of effort to hold onto friends that may or may not be good for them. I rarely spare such effort to this task.
And then came that fateful moment four years ago, when I realized how wonderful it was for someone to accept me, to love and care for me and not pull me apart from the inside out based on my flaws. In hindsight, I was just very fragile then. My previous friends hardly did me any harm, but I didn't feel a deep connection, and I was very insecure. With this new person, however, I felt that I had finally found my place and my person. It took a while to dawn on me, but then I felt like everything would be okay. At one point, I was rather codependent on her. I regret that period, in which I damaged myself and the relationship that I so cherished for the sake of ambitions. I do not regret my ambitions, of course. I just regret how I handled them in respect to my personal life.
After the ordeal was over and I had survived after willingly submitting myself to that particular rat race for so long, I practically prayed every night that she would stay with me. I hoped that I had not cracked something in her, or something in me that would lead me astray. I didn't know if she would hear, though she's quite the empath, but I prayed anyway that I would be good enough for her. That was a genuine concern. By that point, I really thought that I had failed to be good enough. I felt like I hadn't been sufficiently supportive, sufficiently sympathetic, and sufficiently understanding. The more words I used to describe myself, the more inadequate I felt. There were times when I wanted to get away from her, just to see if she needed or wanted to hear from me just as much as I wanted and needed her around. I ceased to call her. After all, my codependent stage had left me conditioned to expect most of the calls to go to voicemail. That would be the only chance for me to hear her voice. Soon, she didn't even use a personalized voicemail message anymore. I was greeted by a machine. I think that chipped away at me.
Every time I picked up my phone and found her number in the directory, I began to automatically draw up memories of endless repetitions of customized voicemail greetings, memories of wishing that someone could hold me or soothe me with words.To call her, at this point, would be too painful. I did, though. Sadly, whenever I got through, I still felt a bit broken inside from the effort. If she never picked up, that meant she didn't want to be friends. However, if she did pick up and speak with me nicely, that meant that she tolerated me, but I wasn't good enough.
As we grew older, this mattered less and less. Our problems started piling, one on another, and it was then that we really needed each other. We both had dreams that were too big for the small town, though they weren't grand. They were just idealistic and beautiful, wild as the roaring wind. It's funny that we talked so much. Neither of us followed the advice that we had given to each other. Neither of us went into majors that represented or reflected what we truly wanted out of life. Neither of us went to the college of our dreams. It wan't because we were rejected. It was just that there was so much pressure to do what we were told to do, as ugly as that sounds.
And then, college came. I swore to myself that I would never part ways with her. She's the gauge that I use when I measure all of my other friendships, past, present, and future. We went to different universities, but we met up periodically to talk about our lives and our thoughts, which were still of the same flow and the same veins of ideas. When I talked with her, I felt like no time had passed since I last saw her. First quarter, it was. Everything wasn't quite settled yet, and we were still finding out what we had to do to make what we wanted of our lives.
Second quarter then comes, and the illusory peace falls to pieces. We're both not pleased with our situations. I want to be in a major that I'll truly love and adore, and she dreams even bigger. We turn to each other when we fight our parents, sisters united with common ideas. She really was like a sister to me, a sister in all but blood, as she put it. There's too much going on. I suddenly feel like everything's out of my hands. She's good at comforting people. I'm not. I try, but I have a tendency to sound like a know-it-all, apparently, when I talk. I didn't say this to her, sometimes she's too mystical to make sense to me. A mystic and a factbook- interesting combo, but with lots of difficulties.
Recently, I realized that I really didn't know how to make her better when she was fuming and frustrated. She knew how to put a smile on my face when something triggered me to cry, but I couldn't figure out how to comfort her. I simply wasn't good enough, I thought, since I didn't think she really wanted to hear any of my facts and analysies. That would be too much to expect. We're not even legally able to drink yet! After one last dilemma, I realized that I was truly as inadequate as I had once believed myself to be.
Maybe she needed her alone time, but I did not intend for her to feel perpetually bruised and bleeding in places. While I had tried the same approach on my parents, they had a similar reaction, skewing the argument to something that they did indeed understand.
Thus, I realized that I needed to say goodbye. I couldn't satisfy her needs, and she had no reason to think of mine at that point. I do so much harm, she even says so sometimes just to remind me. In my heart, though, I'm thinking that it's over, and this is the one great jewel shining like a star. I had to let go because I was too critical, too much of every bad thing I could think of. In my mind, I regard this connection to her as severed. Still, I wait to see if she'll actually keep talking to me after this. With her, I can honestly say that it's my personality that's causing my issues, not minimal optimization of the workforce. How bittersweet all of this is!

EDIT- Wow...that last paragraph. I'll leave it as evidence of what my mind does when I write in my sleep. It seems like I'm searching for beauty, despite being so disappointed and exhausted.