Every year teaches you more about yourself, but this year has had me really get through what I would call a very rigorous stage of navigating the madness that is adult relationships because wehhhhh. I don’t even know what exclamation to bring over for this.
It is constant mix of deciding how much of yourself to invest in it, when to let go, when to step away, when to close a door. Yohh. The discernment from God on that is exceedingly necessary in every way, shape and form, and not just receiving this discernment but acting on it to help save you from some of the drama.
The issue at times with me, especially now is that I begin to put things in the “immigration perspective” and I am just like “I will leave”, “I may leave”, “I may go”, “There was a time in my life when this person wasn’t here and I didn’t know them” because I want to let myself get hang up on folks or maybe I just want to give up on trying. I think in the mix of this, there is also me wanting to protect myself. In the “leaving well” series, one thing I am striving for is to leave and just live lightly. God called me out on wanting to do too much and hold on to people like they were glass some time at the start of the year and I really had to deep that and get to the root cause of what was causing me to act a certain way.
It is absolutely okay to start relationships, make friends, reach out, do the things that should be done, can be done, need to be done and all that, but what is even more important to address is the reason for you doing all these things. What is the driving factor behind it because that is what may cause or determine how you act and what you do. After having a trigger holiday season in Cape Town courtesy of “the rona’, the unpreparedness of immigration and the cliqueness of Cape Town, I think the residual trauma of emotions has me acting up between December and February to try an ascertain to myself that I had people in my life, that I wasn’t ever going to be alone and in a fix and the fear of things I was scared to the core of plus any past events repeating themselves had me doing all sorts of things until God was just like “sis calm the flipping hell down”.
There are so many things that can ideally factor into why adult relationships can feel like you are going through the most sometimes, but I think after a reminder and wake-up call from The Lord, I had to purpose more to also be and live light as I deal with this. I also had to put it into the context of my immigration era and think about just how much effort I really had to be putting in into all this relationshipping considering that I may be in transition. I have to had to make sure to be led more by the former and not the latter because the latter is more a fear + vain response. It is perfectly okay to want to protect yourself, but I feel like dwelling on this can lead to one being closed off, me in particular.
There is so much to navigate and I think what shocks you the most and can have you even tempted to second guess yourself or even humanity is when you vibe with someone and it’s like they give you a break at some point but I have had to remind myself not to take it personally. I had a friend tell me that how people treat you or how they accept you says more about them than it does about you and so one should not begin to immediately think “oh shucks maybe there’s something wrong with me that I have to fix in order to make myself more appealing, taken more seriously, prevent this, etc”. The internalization to that level is not really necessary and I have had to guard myself from that more and remember that last year (2021), God did tell me that people doing life with one another also has a lot to do with them being compatible or feeling like they are compatible on a couple of fronts and that is something to not take personally or make deep at all. People can just like what they like and we really don’t have much control over that and who they vibe with or want to vibe with + who they feel drawn to. And also, at the end of the day we can’t and weren’t really created to be for errbody so why we out here getting so worked up about it. I think societal expectations for one to be generally liked to show that they are being team players with others, I don’t know but it is not necessary, like it is well. I think where it hurts more and where it stings and what we think about a lot is when we were under the assumption that we rhymed with a person and then things just happened and then boom, ish ended. Again, as a recovering overthinker who has had a PhD in wanting to resuscitate all if not every relationship, I have had to take a step back and work on living + being light in the way I deal with these relationship things i.e. give it back to God when it hurts and you find yourself obsessing over why you and this person don’t have the relationship you had before or the one you thought you’d have because as much as I talk about the need to be light and take everything in stride, the pain and questions will be there and I told myself that it is nothing to be embarrassed about honestly. I think sometimes I have wanted to act like it’s g and yet I know that I am probably going through some things emotionally. Bring it before The Lord, ask to learn what you can from the encounter in order to do better with your future relationships and just leave the rest alone. As someone said or rather some people kept on saying in 2021, “If you don’t get it forget about it.” I want to rephrase this and say, “if you couldn’t learn from it, if it was no longer serving any meaningful purpose then child of God find a way to forget about it and walk away from it surely”.
Also, with regards to being light in the way we tackle the aspect of relating, I have had to take back that PhD in wanting to resuscitate relationships that left me striving and exhausted in a place of one-sidedness to now stepping away when I need to and trusting that I did all I could ( even feels mad saying this) and now I must trust God to bring in people in my life that I am on the same wavelength with or that some relationships will picked up and resumed whenever. Otherwise you may see yourself going down a deep hole that is absolutely unnecessary for you to be under in the first place and the fact is no-one has been called to one-sided relationships because any relationship just takes two to tango because no-one has been created with the capacity to carry the work of two people so don’t you dare let anyone suck you into that place. This year, after releasing myself from another “rescue mission”, I saw myself have more room for other people in my life and it felt so life-giving. But also, I have to give it up to my accountability group for keeping me together because wehhhhhh. Yessesss. Jirre. Abeg..
At the end of it, may God allow us to heal from any parts of us that may seem to be chipped at or lost as we interact with people. May He allow us to continue to reach out to others and fully be the people we are even with the baggage or the memories, scars or whatever it is that we may be carrying from our past encounters so we can continue to make room for whoever is supposed to be in our lives as we go forward.
I also just have to say that we live, we learn and we grow and we do better and for that one must extend Grace to oneself and be ready to roll with the punches, accept that sometimes you may fall, be punched in the face plus also meet + encounter some lovely beautiful people in the mix also. The latter is what makes all the drama sometimes worth wading through.
For now, I just want to congratulate all of us, me inclusive, for making it through another year of deciphering all sorts of communications made, communication that didn’t happen, communication that got misinterpreted, all sorts of efforts made, the losses, the gains, the questions, the confusion, the second-guessing, the madness of all the relating. Well done on giving things a try and may you be in position to continue finding your tribe in each and every context of your life. May the people you want, need and are looking for find you in a way that is so effortless. May the discernment we all need to shield ourselves from one-sided relationships, overburdening endeavours, unnecessary pain, uncalled for heartache as well as the courage and boldness to set and reinforce boundaries be given to us, Amen.
I came ready to give a story on how two folks were acting up after I had to enforce boundaries but I felt like this took whatever it need to for me to get the release I had to.
This article has been as messy as the title of the post and the topic itself but it is what it is.
More love and light,
Your friendly neighborhood ninja
mwebazavanessa 