November 21st, 2023
It’s hard to keep loving someone who continually disappoints you and perpetually hurts you, no matter how deeply you love them.
I wasn’t sure when to write this essay, but the holidays are here, and it’s that time of year so many of us are most disappointed and hurt.
Early on in my sobriety, I learned a lot about a concept called detachment, which is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a way of disconnecting from whatever (or whoever) it is that does not serve us.
It sounds cold, but it’s a way of taking responsibility for our own lives, and allowing others to take responsibility for theirs.
Here’s the thing, though: you can detach with love. You can still love someone and decide to set boundaries between you.
You can love someone and not believe what they believe. You can love someone and not support their words or actions. You can love someone from far away and genuinely hope the best for them.
Oddly enough (or not), for me, detaching with love has helped me a lot with people I don’t even know. We all have artists and writers and musicians and politicians and social media personalities we love and, inevitably, these people are going to reveal that they’re human (a twist!) and fallible and, as fans who make these personalities part of our own, we become forced to reckon with it.
For me, it’s loving with detachment. I can love something a person has created and not believe what they believe, not support their words or actions, and genuinely hope the best for them.
And if I can do this for Matty Healy (don’t look him up), I can do this for my family and friends and even acquaintances and strangers that I barely know.
I can love people who are flawed and make bad decisions and need help because loving people is what I feel is the right thing to do. And it doesn’t mean I need those people in my life.
It’s a worthwhile concept: you’re not abandoning the person who needs you. You’re allowing them the same freedom you deserve. And it allows your love to live and be where it needs to be.
The Den 