Closing My Heart

Yesterday, while perusing my Facebook feed, I noticed a group of girls I went to high school with that all have babies now had gotten together yesterday for a play date. I was a little put off that I wasn't invited and then I realized I hadn't actually spoken to any of these people in months, and a few of them in at least a year. In that moment, I had a break through. It wasn't that I didn't like these girls and they didn't like me, it was just...we're all different now. Not good, not bad, just different. And that's okay.

I've had to come to the realization that I've had to close my heart off to some people who occupied it in the past.

A dear friend of mine went through a nasty break up a while ago. This man she was in love with just dropped her like a hot potato for reasons still unknown. She's a fantastic person and deserved far better. We've spent a lot of time talking about the situation and I've encouraged her to move on. Clearly, he's not the one and she needs to close her heart off to him. She needs to be thankful he was in her life for a while and then close it off.

Oprah is one of my biggest inspirations. I find her to be so wise and timely in her speaking. I watched her Master Class show on OWN a few weeks ago. She said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that when she has a disagreement or falling out with someone, she learns what she can from the situation. Good, bad or ugly, she learns something. It might be something she doesn't want to or like to learn, but she learns. She's grateful for the experience and the lessons, forgives the person the best she can and then closes off that part of her heart. She doesn't write that person off completely out of her life, she just closes that part of her heart.

I think that is so important. Closing off a part of your heart doesn't mean that the person who occupied that space is gone forever. It simply means that part that they occupied is now closed. Should that person re-enter your life, they will need to earn a new location. They will need to start fresh in your life.

I've needed to close my heart to someone who hurt me a few years ago. I've known I needed to do this but I never had the courage to do it. Today. I did. I deleted this person from my Facebook, out of my phone contacts and I feel good about it. I respect this person and I forgave long ago the hurts, deception and general awfulness that occurred. I just can't allow this person to take up anymore space in my heart. I learned a lot from the situation, mainly that people you really care about and pour time in to don't always feel the same about you. I learned I am a stronger person than I thought I was. I learned that I have to stop putting stock in some people and focus more on myself. I learned to rely on myself, my own motivation and that I have to be the bigger person at all times.

Closing my heart to this person was really hard. But it's so important. Part of my post partum issues is that I rehash every thing a thousand times over. I obsess and lose sleep constantly over the tiniest perceived slight. So of course, having someone completely flip part of my life when I was pregnant didn't do good things for my ppd. It aggravated my symptoms to the point where I had to double my medicine dosage just to press forward with my daily life. I wish I had been strong enough to close my heart off sooner, but I couldn't. I was surviving and that was enough. Now, as my son turns one in 6 weeks, I'm finally ready and able to close my heart off. I'm done with this person's chapter in my life. I'm grateful for the good times we had, I learned a lot from the situation but now, I must move on. It certainly doesn't mean that this person is a bad person or doesn't fit in other people's lives very well. It's just...not right for me at this moment. Someday maybe things will change, but for the moment, this is what it is. For my own mental health and for my future, I've closed this person out of my heart. And that's okay.