S1:E10: This is Me Choosing to Let You Go

In this episode I tell my story about a heartbreaking friend breakup.

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Mental Breakthrough, a memoir podcast about owning our most vulnerable stories so we can live a life of authenticity.

I’m Maryann Samreth, the woman behind the pen name, Sincerely Miss Mary. Together, I take you through my healing journey as I share stories of moving through pain to get to the other side where the light shines again.

In this season, I carry you moment to moment, starting with a tumultuous breakup, then multiple breakdowns, and eventually a breakthrough.

I share stories of how my gift of writing guided me through the darkest moments of my life, leading me to reconnect with my Cambodian ancestors and break the cycle of generational trauma.

There is power in storytelling and sharing our vulnerabilities with the world. It opens doors to cultivate deeper connections with others on the same journey so we can heal as a collective.

By sharing my truths, I pave the way for others to feel safe sharing theirs. We all have a story to tell. Stories that can be someone’s silver lining. Stories of hope.

Episode Intro:

In this episode I tell you about a traumatic friend breakup I had the summer of 2019. My friendship with a best friend began to shift as I was choosing the path of healing, self-love, and growth in my single season. My friend began to side with my abuser and invalidate my experiences as a victim. I had to make one of the most difficult decisions in my life and let her go.

Friend breakups are harder than relationship breakups especially when you’re the one choosing to reject someone to protect your mental peace.

Episode 10: This is Me Choosing to Let You Go

“I want you to see how beautiful you are. How beautiful your life is. How beautiful this world can be if you choose to make it. I want you to love you the way I love you,” I say to my best friend knowing these words would be the last I’d say to her in the summer of 2019, marking the end of our friendship season.

Since my arrival to sunny California, to see my best friend of 7 years, I noticed this huge shift in our relationship. We were drifting away in two different directions. I was swimming forward to a path of healing, post breakup while my friend was voluntarily choosing to sink.

What was once a free spirited human was now someone anchored down by her decision to role play the victim of every scenario.

I wanted so badly to rescue as I spoke those words to her as we ate $20 burgers on a bougie outdoor patio in Santa Barbara. We stared out at the most beautiful coastal view. A view where the horizon blurred the ocean and the sky. This mesmerizing view haunts my memories as being the place I chose to let my best friend go.

A day prior, we’re sitting in her kitchen as I shower her with my new dreams of becoming a writer and dancing in my single season. I was oozing hope and faith for my new life where I was creating my new dreams without a partner, a foreign concept for her to accept.

She was infatuated with soul mates and believed in the potential of my abuser to change and be forgiven. She attached her identity to mine and wished upon me to go back to a place I already escaped. She wished upon me a mindset of codependency, people pleasing, and external validation provided by a man. A belief I had broken out of that once held our friendship together.

I wasn’t the version she wanted me to be anymore. Who I was becoming threatened her choice to stay where she was. It was an unconscious place for her to be, yet she kept projecting her unhealed pain onto me.

The first projection, in her response to him leaving me after I spoke up about his best friend sexually assaulting me was…

“Poor him, he’s clearly the victim in the breakup.”

The 2nd projection:

“I didn’t know the sexual assault affected you so much.”

And for the 3rd  and final projection which was a huge blow to my self-esteem was

“You took the dog away from him.”

Little did she know, our shared dog, Porpy pooped under his desk almost every day for the past few months leading up to our breakup. Porpy’s actions showed her loyaly lied with me. I can’t take something that rightfully belongs to me and when I was the primary adopter.

Words are powerful and although I can have an understanding of why she said what she said from an unhealed place, she still hurt me. This conversation felt familiar.

Diminishing.

Invalidating.

Triggering.

It felt like victim-blaming all over again and she was taking me back on the healing journey I fought so hard to stay on.

The hardest part about a friend breakup, is witnessing the little moments that reaffirm they no longer have a place in your life. I carried compassion for her each time she said something to me that was invalidating or triggering.

I knew she was unaware of the way she made me feel. I knew she was stuck in a toxic state of depression, disparity, and loneliness. I knew I could no longer be responsible for her pain because this would be repeating my codependent behavior I had towards my abuser, the urge to save them from themselves.

Friends outgrow each other all the time, but no one tells you the signs to look for. No one tells you how hard it is when you’re the person that outgrew them. No one tells you when you grow and evolve you have to leave certain people behind. People that will hold you back if you don’t let go.

After our lunch in the scenic coast of Santa Barbara, she dropped me off at the airport and I gave her a giant hug goodbye. Once she was out of sight, I had tears streaming down my face because I knew I was choosing to let her go and she had no idea.

I had to choose to let her go because I could no longer wait for her to start her transformation journey. I couldn’t stay and watch her fight so hard to stay in her comfortable shadow of self-loathing and pull me down with her. She was disrupting the mental peace I had cultivated in my inner world.

I had to choose to let her go because I needed to put myself first. I needed to live my life on my own terms and stop trying to fix and rescue everyone around me. Her healing was not my responsibility, and all I could do to protect myself was to find acceptance for her unwillingness to want change for herself.

I had to choose to let her go because she was taking me back on my healing journey. She was making me feel guilty for moving forward into a life I always dreamed of. I was falling in love with my solitude. I was falling in love with New York City again. I was taking myself on dates, going to open mics, and thriving off my single season.

I was moving through the fear of being alone and I absolutely was swimming in the joy of it.

The way I was beginning to move through life made my friend uncomfortable and she unconsciously tried to dim my light by repeatedly making me question my breakup with my abuser.

When you outgrow a friendship, the pressure is on you to either set boundaries or let them go. The betrayal of my friend painting my abuser the victim and siding with him, made it unbearable for me to keep her in my life.

When I asked my therapist about how a woman can put a man before another woman when the man was clearly in the wrong, she said that it’s the system we live in. The white patriarchal system that stays alive when people like my friend take accountability away from my abuser. She was the true Karen of my life compared to the one I talk about in episode 7.

I can have compassion for her indecision to do inner work of healing. I understand everyone is on their journey and their timeline. But I will not tolerate someone choosing the side of my abuser over me. I will not even tolerate neutrality. With abuse there is a clear right and wrong, and someone’s inability to choose a side is not someone that belongs in my world, considering my circumstances.

We eventually had the breakup conversation over the phone a few weeks after I saw her. I confronted her about how the way she spoke to me was detrimental to my healing journey. My attempt at setting boundaries was met with defensiveness, resistance, and backlash. It wasn’t pretty, but she was showing me exactly who she was, and how she preferred me to be…small, unhealed, and stuck…just like her.

I tried my best to end this friendship with love and meeting her pain with compassion. I wanted her to know that the good memories we’ve made in the past will never be diminished by where we were at with our lives.

I’ll always cherish our spontaneous cheese fries nights in college.

I’ll never forget our East Village bar adventures or the time I dragged her on a booze cruise.

Our past memories will always live in history and that’s what makes friend breakups so hard, to accept we were at different places in our lives and will continue to grow a part as we uphold different values.

The version I was becoming could no longer accommodate the comfort zone of someone who wasn’t ready to look within.

If you’re going through a friend breakup right now because you outgrew them, I want you to know this is normal when your transforming in into a new version of yourself. You have to shed an old version of you to become the new one. So those that want to hang on to the old one will create tension in your life.

When this happens…it’s best to set strong boundaries or let them go…and if you can..give yourself grace…give yourself kindness…and give yourself the strength to wish them well…

To my former friend who I once labeled my bar buddy for life…if you’re listening…I hope you can find a place in your heart to forgive me for hurting you…I hope you understand where I was coming from…because this is me choosing to let you go…

I send you healing.

I send you strength.

I send you the power of choice to be who you want to be in this world that is made up entirely of our own perceptions and rejections.

Most of all I send you a desire for self-love.

I send you all of these things from afar and from a distance.

I wish you well from afar and from a distance.

I wish you the best from afar and from a distance because keeping you at a distance is the best practice of self-love.

This is me choosing myself.

This is me choosing to let you go.

Outro:
We all have a story to tell and I want to thank you for listening to mine. I’m Maryann, the woman behind the pen name, Sincerely Miss Mary.

I hope this episode helped you feel less alone if you’re going through a friend breakup. When we are growing and evolving, we so badly want to bring people on the journey with us, however not everyone is ready. Be kind to yourself and give your friends compassion and love if you have to let them go.

Thank you all for listening to my story. If you liked this episode please leave me a review. You can follow me on TikTok and Instagram @sincerelymissmary and download my free breakup workbook that also works for friend breakups, link is also in shownotes.

I will talk to you all next week