The Shape of Growth

In life, there comes a time when you realize the person you once felt safest with no longer plays an active role in your story. Whether it is your best friend from ninth grade, your ex-boyfriend, or someone you used to call every day, that realization always feels disorienting to me. We were inseparable at one point in time. What happened?

And the answer is almost always the same. Life. Life happened. You got a job. You moved away. You took up a new hobby. You got married. You had kids. You took on new responsibilities, and endless adulting. Over the course of navigating all of that, the person who once felt so close no longer does. It can almost feel like that person has become a stranger.

Sadness always descends upon me when I face this cruel little truth. Maybe I should have tried harder to stay in touch. Maybe I should find something we still have in common. Maybe I should work harder to bring the closeness back. In my experience though, these efforts often fall flat. The conversation quickly falters, and I am left feeling disappointed. Not in them, but in the fact that we no longer connect on the same level as we did before.

But there is an English phrase that describes this natural cycle of life, and it lightens my heart every time: “We grew apart.”

It is simple, but it captures something tender and true. We all move through life at different paces and in different directions. Just like plants do. It is not anyone’s fault. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It is not a thing to regret or fear. There is great comfort and relief in that, and I rest in that assurance.

My husband of twelve years and I grew apart over time. That does not mean we did not love each other. It simply means we were both being true to ourselves, and we were no longer connected in the way we used to be. So we chose to part ways.

It is sad to say farewell to a relationship that meant so much to me. It hurts. It is confusing. It makes me wonder what I could have done differently. But I know it is going to be okay. I am going to be okay, and my now-former partner will be okay, too. Because we only got here by growing.

And maybe that is a beautiful testimony to the human experience. We are constantly growing. Sometimes apart from one another. Sometimes together. Sometimes alongside one another.

So let the distance that grows between us become a celebration of our growth. Our progress. The perpetually compounding nature of our lives. What a beautiful thought, that we are always growing. Always changing. Always evolving.

Written by SAKURACO