letting go and moving on

when choosing yourself makes you the villain

I told myself this was going to be the year I cut people out of my life.

I hold on too long. And if someone is happy not being my friend, I want to learn how to accept that instead of forcing something that clearly isn’t working. I want to be unbothered—but I also need to give myself permission to feel. There’s a fine line between honouring your emotions and suffocating yourself with them. I’m still learning where that line lives. I say I want to let it go, but where can I place all that frustration? I am still figuring that part out.

Now, an opportunity has come along that I hope will help me truly learn.

In this new change, if someone wants to be in my life, it’s going to require effort. On both sides. I have to decide whether I want to do that work, and if they don’t agree, I’m allowed to let go. I’m allowed to free myself from the emotional baggage I would otherwise keep carrying.

I’m intentionally ending friendships. Removing people from my life who would rather gossip than talk. I no longer want to entertain people who make me worry if I am a good person.

It’s time to begin the emotional journey for myself to ready me with an answer if needed, or to simply have an outlet to let things go.

**

I keep thinking of Ashley Tisdale’s article for The Cut.

Ashley Tisdale was vilified when she admitted she left her “toxic mom group.”

I don’t know the full story. Maybe, to some people, she really was the villain. Maybe she contributed to the tension, or failed to communicate, or chose a public outlet to express something that should have stayed private.

But in her own way, she chose herself. She put her needs above what others wanted her to be or expected her to tolerate. And that decision, that self-preserving, made her the villain in someone else’s story.

It’s possible for her to be right while others see her as wrong. Both sides can feel justified. In reality, what we label as “right” or “wrong” is almost always dependent on who’s doing the viewing.

For a long time, I believed that if I hurt someone, I was automatically the bad person.

But what if the other person hurt me too?

I spent years putting myself down whenever someone was upset with me. I never learned how to stand up for myself. I can be wrong; many times I have been. What happens when I don’t think I’m wrong, and I end up hurt?

In my journey of learning who is really a friend of mine and who has kept me around for convenience, I’m considering who has hurt me. Who has made me ignore my own emotions because I might have made a mistake? That can’t be friendship, that one moment will make them completely forget everything good. Friendship requires forgiveness, and I am often too quick to forgive others without forgiving myself.

I need to start viewing friendships through how I am treated, rather than just how I have treated others. I’m quick to vilify myself immediately, rather than considering it could be the other person.

*

You may be the villain in someone else’s story, but you must remain the victor in your own.

Not as permission to excuse hurtful or inappropriate behaviour, but because you are the one living your life. You’re the one who has to look in the mirror and say, I am good. If others don’t agree, that belief belongs to them.

The more you choose yourself as the main character, the easier it becomes to loosen your grip on other people’s opinions.

Stand up for yourself. Stop shrinking because of what others believe about you. And yes, sometimes you will be wrong. When that happens, hold your head high. Acknowledge it. Apologize. And then move forward.

You’re allowed to do that too.