If there’s one thing 2018 has taught me it’s how to let go.

This year has shown me that holding onto things that aren’t meant for you will cause more harm than good. I know this is as cliché as it gets, but this is more for me than anyone else. This is my lesson, albeit a lesson that I’m still learning.

I wanted to scream so badly, “Don’t be the girl who never leaves him alone.” We all have that friend. Some of us have been that friend. You know the one. The one who is loyal to a fault and no matter what that no good ass ninja does, she still won’t leave his ass alone. I don’t mean this as a diss. I don’t know a woman alive who hasn’t had that one who took her down through there.

I had a revelation this week, as I was in route to do a drive by on my ex. I argued with myself while heading home only to make a detour that was out of my way because “I just had to know.” “Know what,” I answered out of my mouth. Whether he was home. Whether he was alone. Whether or not I’d see that same car that I’d spotted him get into before. I went back and forth with myself, out loud inside my head.

“What difference does it make, D? Even if you do see the car there, what’s that going to prove? Furthermore what’s that going to change,” I asked myself. My heart pounded, the closer I got, almost like I could hear it in my ears. I turned my radio down, as if that made a difference on whether or not  he could see me if he happened to be outside. A brief moment of logic almost made me change my course and just go home. But I decided against it. After all, I was there now.

I think I was actually shaking as I turned onto the street. My stomach was doing flips. And even though I seemed over him on most days, the thought of seeing that car parked there again made me sick. “Why are doing this to yourself?” I searched myself for a valid answer until I came up with this.

The reason we put ourselves through what seems to be a torment, is actually a necessary evil. I concluded that while I didn’t want to see that, maybe the reality of it would bring my heart to the realization that our relationship was over. See apparently, my heart & my head were still in disagreement. I feel like maybe it was my head that led me there, in hopes of proving to my heart the evidence of what the mind already knew. I know it sounds crazy, but when women continue to stay with a man who has broken her heart, it’s not because she’s stupid or oblivious to the facts of what he’s done. In her head, she knows what it looks like, but that doesn’t negate what she feels.