Wednesday, March 21, 2012

changing and letting go...

The photo above is from Virginia Beach, VA. We went there to stay at a spa, and have a "babymoon," one of the many changes in life going on. I think it was fun for Nate to see the town he lived in for seven years from my point of view, and I wanted to see what part of Nate's life was like in the time between when we were in high school together to when we met again. How different our lives are now!

Even when I think about what was happening in my life four years ago, I can hardly recognize that life. I had just left one life behind, started residency, had some heartbreak, learned what depression can do to you...And this year, officially started a new life, contemplated graduating, started a family with Nate, and now, thinking about a move across the country again. Really, these are all exciting, but scary changes.

Yet, the hardest lesson for me to learn I've found is when to give up, and how to "divorce" people in my life when I've realized I've made a mistake in allowing them in my life in some capacity. Each time I've had to do this (and really it's been less than five times in my whole life), it's led to some aspect of depression for me, and a sense of failure- even when I can see that they were not particularly good people that I would want in my life. I'm going through this now, and have found it a wrenching experience. Yet, now, there's more at stake -allowing these toxic people in my life affects Nate, too, since our lives are intertwined. This time, the stress and sleeplessness associated with the experience made me ill- having to take medication for a lung infection- and on some level risked our unborn child's life as well.

I gave it some thought, and walked away from the situation as much as possible. I did some purging of my social networks, and with it, a sense of lightness, of freedom. I'm starting to think that a lesson I can teach our future son or daughter- one I'm still learning- is that sometimes walking away is as important as sticking with it.