How You Know It’s Over Before It Ends

We like to complicate people. We look too far and too deep in the direction of all the ways they are lost and confused and misunderstood because it comforts us. Complicating people gives us hope. We can rest on the possibility that their leaving is because of some underlying issue we can’t understand yet, not their desire to simply just go. We mistakenly gauge love by duration, not depth, and we never know how to let each other go without leaving claw marks.

Yet we always seem to know when it’s over long before it ends. We realize we’re fighting for the sake of it, not to reach a resolution. We realize the only thing holding us back from letting go is some external convenience. The most inconsequential things they do start becoming deal breakers. We become hyper-aware of all the things we want to do before we settle down, and all of a sudden, they feel urgent. We start analyzing the reasons why a relationship is so ill-fitting for us, why their company is entirely inconvenient. We spend our days picking apart our relationships to find enough reason go to when the truth of it is that you can just go if you want to. The desire to is all the reason you’ll ever need. The knowing that you need to means it’s over regardless.

You don’t have to search and compile and justify. But you do have to realize that you’re not actually weighing your options, you’re digging for an excuse.

Things happen. People do change, but not because they’ve evolved into someone different. Time and experience usually helps us slough off that which we thought was true of ourselves so we can be more of who we innately are. And the point of any relationship is to aid in doing just that. If where that inevitable path leads leaves you unhappy, be okay with the fact that some of the most significant things in our lives aren’t necessarily the ones that last forever. You can’t go beyond your saturation point. You can’t let yourself regress. If your paths are diverging, let them.

There are some people we’re just meant to grow out of. There are some relationships we stamp expiration dates on as soon as we walk in. There are some people who are meant to come and show us something important. There are some that won’t ever make sense, no matter how hard we try. There are some we think we’ll be in forever then aren’t. Sometimes you’ll know it’s over right away and sometimes it will take years of being apart to accept it. But the common ground to all of this is that sooner or later, we all have to find the faith that there is something out there that is greater than what which we have right now. And needing that faith can only ever come from the knowing that it’s over, even before it has ended.