Letting go of the unwanted

It’s the love interest that wants to only be friends.

It’s the friend that wants to be more.

How do you let go of the very thing that doesn’t want to be held but you need? Maybe not need, but you want.

Sometimes they do not want to be held at all, sometimes they do not want to be held in the form you want, the form you offer.

How can you be just friends with the one you believe you are in love with?

How can you just be friends with the one who has professed a deep love for you?

To the second point, you can. You can push aside that moment of their vulnerability and keep it going like it never happened. But they can’t do that; not always.

Sometimes that person refuses to be held in your life the way you offer, which can create an unspoken tension. An awkwardness that gets bigger and bigger.

They don’t want the compensation prize of just friends, they want the prize. Your requited love is the prize.

But you,

You don’t want to be held that way… do you? Yes, their declarations of love as flattering as it is to hear, wash over you like water on stone. Your heart remains unflinching.

Is it them? Is it you? Is it ‘it’?

Sometimes it’s as though you have the answer to these persistent questions… other times you scratch your head more confused.

But you want to hold onto them though… But they do not want to be held in that way.

A quandary or a quandary because you make it so?

‘If that is what you’re offering… I’m not interested,’ they say with their actions and often times utter similar words.

So what do you do?

You’re asking me?!

Well, what I would do, what I used to do is buckle… buckle under the pressure and give in. Because of the perception of loss, I do not want to live with it.

But now it’s different. My response is different. Different yet complex because this response is new.

This new way is usurping a known and old pattern… I am creating new paths and pathways for myself.

So, what do you do?

When they do not want what you can give, what you are willing to give… you have to let them go.

Now, I know to let go.

As they defiantly (and sometimes admirably) take a stand on what is not good enough for them… I too must defiantly stand on what is not good enough for me.