Growth&Grinds

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn this past year was the difference between capacity and chemistry.

You hear it all the time: Love is not enough.

But love and capacity exist on entirely different frequencies somehow moving together in endless motion, until one gets snagged and the whole system falls apart.

In some ways, I still think love is enough. Enough to change the world, even. And sometimes, realizing someone doesn’t have the capacity to walk through something with you is an act of love itself.

That was a really hard pill for me to swallow. They might as well have handed me a horse tranquilizer at that point.

“You’re going through too much.”

Those were some of the last words I heard from the person who, at the time, was the only person I really had in my corner.

Up until that moment, they had been there through some of the worst periods of my life. The only one who truly saw how severe things were. Around every corner. Every twist and turn.

But the chaos didn’t stop. Even after that conversation, things kept deteriorating for me. And when Kratos passed, I reached out only to realize I had been blocked.

I spent a decent chunk of time sitting in my car rereading the words:

“I want to be here for you. I am here for you. But right now I need to be here for myself. My life has been slipping downhill.”

At first, I clung to the words ‘I’m here for you,’ hoping they would come back. Through all the pain and grief, those words felt like a warm hug when there was no one physically beside me while I processed everything.

I remember so many nights, in the dead of winter, alone in my car just absolutley clining to that text as if my life depended on it.

At the time, it did. Hope was the only thing holding me together.

But days turned into weeks, and weeks slipped into months.

Eventually, I started hearing the other half of what they had so clearly tried to tell me:

“My life has been slipping downhill.”

And then came the quiet realization:

They didn’t have the capacity to sit in the fire with me.

Leaving was an act of self-preservation for them, just as clinging to them was an act of self-preservation for me.

And almost instantly, I began to let go of the anger and resentment. Like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.

Is this what growth feels like? To finally see the whole picture. 

To forgive.

The universe has the most extraordinary way of getting you to let go.

The way I see it, you can either let go with love, or it will forcibly be taken from you.

After so long, but really not that long at all, I found peace and strength. After so long of saying I’d welcome them back I realized that I deserved someone with the same capacity, to sit in the chaos of life with me. Someone who does not run or hide away. That isn’t a reflection of someone’s value, but simply a misalignment in capacity.

And in that, I found what it means to truly love someone.

Love them to let them go freely.

Love is meeting someone where they are at.

Love is freedom.

Freedom to express.

Freedom to exist.

Freedom to leave. 

I used to think that if I just explained where I was coming from a little more, if I could find the right words, that if I just tried to hold on and control a little more, if I just loved them a little more than they would understand. They would understand.

They would stay.

They would change.

Things would fall into place.

True alignment would happen.

But now, My whole understanding of love is different. The more you try to hold on, the more restrained things become. 

I think one of the cruelest parts of grief is how quickly it teaches you the difference between people who love you and people who can carry pain with you.

Those aren’t always the same people.

Some people are built for laughter, adventure, celebration, and light. 

Others can sit with you in the dark without trying to escape it. 

And sometimes the people we need in one season of life simply do not have the emotional bandwidth for another.

That realization used to make me feel unwanted and abandoned.

Now it just makes me aware of how important it is to meet people at their capacity level. 

Now there is a certain strength and peace that comes with accepting the ever changing seasons in my life, and the lessons that come with it.