the art of letting go
i am a mosaic of everyone i ever loved
I can only sleep with my shirt tucked in, just like my mother used to do when she tucked me in each night.
I cook my noodles a certain way because my best friend in tenth grade once showed me how.
I laugh at weird jokes, and my humor is what it is because of a best friend I had when I was eighteen.
I learned to be more carefree, to let things roll off my back, because of a friend I had in university.
I smile more in photos now because my sister made me see just how beautiful I looked when I did.
I love a song because a girl I was friends with years ago showed it to me.
I wear my hair down because someone once told me I looked nicer that way.
I write, read, and immerse myself in words because I want to be like my brother.
Every part of me, every little habit, is a reflection of those I’ve loved. I am who I am because of all the love that has touched my life.
The truth is, most of the people who shaped me are no longer in my life. I’ve had to let go—not of the memories, not of the pieces they gave me, but of them. I carry their best parts with me, the parts that taught me, inspired me, and helped me grow. But I’ve also learned when it was time to move on. Letting go of people doesn’t erase their influence; it just means I chose what to keep and what to leave behind. And there’s beauty in that—holding onto the love, the laughter, the lessons, but freeing myself from what no longer fits who I am.
It sounds so easy, right? But in reality, it's anything but. It’s hard because friendships are messy. They get tangled up with all these other emotions—like fear, loneliness, nostalgia—we get so used to a person, their presence, and the history you share and we believe that staying, even if it hurts, is the right move.
When a friendship becomes this draining chore, or when you feel like you’re shrinking yourself just to fit in, that’s when you’ve got to ask: is this really serving me anymore? And I know it sounds harsh, but there’s nothing wrong with outgrowing people. Sometimes you change and they don’t. Or they grow in one direction, and you grow in another. It’s not a betrayal to leave a friendship behind if it’s no longer feeding your soul—it’s just a part of life. Letting go doesn’t erase the good times; it just means you’re making space for what’s next.
Lesson 1: all is NOT fair in love and war
That phrase “all is fair in love and war” has always felt off to me, like an excuse we use to justify the bad stuff. And honestly, it doesn’t just apply to romantic relationships—it’s just as true in friendships. We tell ourselves it’s okay to change everything about who we are to keep people close because we’re terrified of being left behind, or scared of being alone. But the truth is, real friendships shouldn’t ask us to bend over backward until we break.
I can’t count the times I’ve found myself shifting, molding, and twisting my personality to fit the people around me. Let it be abandonment issues or whatever label you want to slap on it—at the end of the day, it’s exhausting. It’s this constant balancing act, trying to be what someone else wants, just so they won’t decide I’m no longer worth their time. I’ve become a version of myself that’s quieter, louder, or more agreeable, depending on what I thought they needed. And, for what? To keep a friendship alive that probably wasn’t even that great to begin with? It’s a cycle, bending until the edges blur, hoping that maybe if I can just be enough of whatever they need, they won’t leave.
But the reality is, it doesn’t work. The friendships where I’ve twisted myself into knots are the ones that always leave me feeling the most drained. I find myself giving more, changing more, while the other person keeps taking, unaware—or maybe just indifferent—to the toll it’s taking on me. And if I stop to think about it, to really look at what’s happening, it hits me: if the roles were reversed, would they do the same for me? Would they be willing to change themselves, to break themselves, to keep me around? The answer is almost always no. And if they would, it wouldn’t have to be me doing all the changing in the first place.
The real problem is being surrounded by people who don't see your worth, and who make you question whether you’re enough. But trust me, you will find people who appreciate you, who love you the way you’ve always dreamt of—without conditions, without all the hoops you think you need to jump through. And honestly, I say this but even I'm still waiting for that. I’m still holding out hope that the right people, the ones who genuinely see me and love me for who I am, will find me. And I know that when it finally happens, I’ll be able to look back at all of this and be glad I went through it. Glad I learned. Glad I suffered, even. Every friendship that made me question my worth, was just pushing me closer to the kind of relationships that I deserve. It’s hard right now, and it’s exhausting, but I know that one day I’ll look back and realize that all of it was worth it—that every setback, every feeling of not being enough, was just preparing me for the people who were always meant to be there, who were always going to love me fully, without question. And that’s worth waiting for.
هل هزمك الخوف أم أخافتك الهزائم؟
Did fear defeat you, or did the defeats scare you?
Are we simply afraid of the unknown, afraid of the consequences of walking away, or are we haunted by past defeats, by the memories of all the times things fell apart?
It’s often fear that holds us in place. Fear of being alone, fear of missing out, fear of abandoning history. But what’s worse is that we convince ourselves that if we stay, if we keep twisting ourselves into something we’re not, we’ll somehow avoid the pain of being left behind. But in truth, the fear doesn’t go away—it just defeats us differently. .
Its ok to be alone.
Instead of facing that fear head-on, we let it shrink us. Fear transforms us, not into something stronger but into something lesser, something molded to fit the needs and comfort of others. It’s easy to convince yourself that changing is just part of the compromise in a friendship—that bending a little is normal, that adapting is what people do. But it’s when bending becomes breaking, when we twist ourselves into someone unrecognizable, that we have to ask if it’s worth it. The fear of loss is real, and it’s painful. But letting that fear decide how we live, letting it shape our relationships, means we’re constantly playing defense, always in a mode of survival. It means we’re acting from a place of lack—believing that we, as we are, aren’t enough, that we have to earn people’s love by becoming what they want. And that’s exhausting. Fear is not something we can ignore, but it is something we can choose not to obey. Because every time we let fear dictate our actions, we’re letting it defeat us.
The defeats pile up quietly. They come in the form of the jokes we don’t laugh at anymore because we’ve learned not to stand out, the opinions we don’t share because we’re afraid of pushing people away, the dreams we’ve shrunk because they didn’t align with what others wanted from us. We lose ourselves one small piece at a time until all that’s left is a collection of compromises—half-loves, half-smiles, half-lived moments that reflect what someone else needed us to be, but never who we truly are. The hardest battles aren’t the loud ones. They’re the quiet decisions to walk away from something that doesn’t serve us anymore, the courage to face the loneliness, the fear of the unknown, and to trust that we will find our way. It’s the realization that letting go doesn’t mean losing—it means choosing ourselves over the fear of losing others.
Maybe that’s the real truth behind all of this—the truth that’s hard to accept, but necessary to understand: friendships, like everything in life, change. People grow apart, hearts shift, and the history you once shared isn’t always enough to carry you forward. And that’s okay. The beauty of it all is that nothing is wasted; every person we meet, and every friendship we struggle through or let go of, shapes us in some way. The defeats we feared, the fears we gave in, the moments we bent too far, they weren’t for nothing. They were lessons. They were moments that taught us how to stand taller, how to draw our lines, and how to love ourselves enough to step away. It’s in the letting go that we find ourselves again, that we make room for the right people, the ones who won’t need us to be anything other than who we are. And maybe, just maybe, those friendships—built on honesty, mutual respect, and real love—are worth all the struggle it took to find them. Because in the end, it isn’t about holding on at all costs; it’s about making sure whatever you hold, and whoever holds you, is doing so with open hands and an open heart.
If I've learned anything from all this, it's that life can be harsh and people can be indifferent, but I have a choice—to carry those lessons forward without letting them harden me
the world is cruel, therefore i won’t be.
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This is a really good post and I agree with you. In this age of social media, it's really easy to have a lot of intense friendships, including with people who demand too much of our time and make us, as you said, bend over backwards for them. The polar opposite of that is ghosting, which is bad as well. I like how your post recommends 'letting go' instead of 'ghosting' or maintaining a high-intensity friendship with somebody who drains you: a gradual parting of ways, a drifting away. That is, unless, the friendship becomes really toxic- then a clean break is more than justified!