The Art Of Letting Go (Online)

As a 21-year-old you do a lot of things for the first time. For me, in 2019, that was blocking people (past lovers) on my social media channels.

Until last year I thought I’d have mastered the elegant art of ‘staying friends on social media and maybe in real life’. I laughed at friends of mine who would frantically block men on Instagram seconds after their relationship had officially ended.

I never said it out loud, but I thought they were childish. They were childish for caring and I was an adult for not caring and leaving the footprints these men had on my life visible for the world to see in my Facebook Friends List.

However, in 2019 something inside me shifted. I realized that I do care. I was never as cool as I wanted to be. All these men I spent several years, months, sometimes only weeks or days with, had an impact on me. They made me laugh and cry and angry but most importantly: They swept me off my feet.  Sometimes my infatuation existed for a brief moment, sometimes it was real love and it lasted for a very long time. But all of my former flames, every single one of them, made me feel something.

I have always had a hard time letting people go, even when I was the one who called it quits. I was nostalgic for what we could have been, but never were.
Pixie Geldof once put it perfectly: “And the way you loved back when you cared and it’s just us two cos loving you’s easy, it’s leaving that’s hard“. I have many talents but forgetting former flames or lost friends is not one of them.

And maybe that is why I started to discipline myself and stopped holding onto people. I did the very thing I always ridiculed – deleting and unfriending on social media.

Last year I found out that I am not cool, I never was. But last year I also stopped letting old flames burn me twice.