No Apologies, No Regrets: On Loving and Letting Go.

Cait Moss
Cait Moss
Jul 20, 2017 · 7 min read
Picjumbo/Viktor Hanacek

August 2008. I’m a baby-faced twenty year-old at a theatre audition. The girl next to me, even younger and even more baby-faced, tells me about her tattoos. She whips down her skirt to show me a piece of artwork that starts at the bottom of her rib-cage and bleeds all the way past her pelvic bones.

She isn’t wearing underwear.

She doesn’t give a damn.

Then and there, I know we will be best friends. Then and there, I love her for her spirit and her tenacity and her light that just seems to overpower the room. Despite the platonic nature of our relationship, I will go on to consider her one of the greatest loves of my life.


September 2016. I feel absolutely no emotional response as I tell that same girl that I cannot keep her in my life. We have been best friends for eight years now, but the last four have been a shipwreck — one that I have desperately tried to survive and piece back together. She has ruined my self-esteem, negatively impacted several relationships in my life, and even attempted to tarnish my work as a writer by claiming it as her own. We are sickly codependent, caught in a constant pattern where she refuses to change her behavior and I endeavor to change mine because I should be the one who is forgiving and loving unconditionally, because our problems are the fault of my inability to “move past” her hurtful actions, rather than the fault of those actions.

We have been apart, or at least more distant, over the past few years, and I have found myself to be a better person because of it. But when I am with her again, I become anxious, and petty, and jealous, and all the other things that I have spent years overcoming and evolving beyond. She drags me back to a past self that I never wanted to see again.

We are technically still working, but at the expense of my mental and emotional health. But I have grown stronger, and I finally see that I cannot love her back into good health or good behavior — in fact, my “unconditional” love has only enabled her. It’s toxic for both of us, even if I’m the only one who realizes it.

So I let go. I let go of what little friendship remains, despite being choked with heartache and betrayal and gas-lighting and a thousand petty slights. I let go of expecting her to change. I let go of forcing myself to change, in ways that I never wanted or intended. I let go of thinking I need her in my life.

I still love her. And because I love her, I let go.

We have evolved into different people. And those people are no longer compatible. She accuses me of letting life change me, and I agree — however, unlike her, I see it as a good thing.

The light is gone. And yet, the lesson remains.


Love is wonderful. Love is grand. Be it platonic or maternal or romantic, all shapes and sizes are just the fuzzy-feels best.

But not all love is healthy. Or helpful. Or worth holding on to.

I will readily admit that I fall in love with the person, and stay in love with the story. I once continued dating a guy for months past our expiration date because we were both named after characters in the same TV show, for the same reasons.

I remember the scene when I first mentioned how I got my name: I was in my dining room, and he was working in the kitchen. We were preparing for a dinner party. I casually told him the story of my naming, because it’s a bit random and I love it. He stopped, face filled with shock. In a voice filled with awe and a tinge of reverence, he told me how he got his name. We both got goosebumps. It seemed like destiny, like some kind of sign.

I loved that story. I loved telling it at dinner parties and art gallery openings. I loved how we smiled at each other when we told it, how my hand almost always found its way to the crook of his elbow, without conscious thought. I loved how it made other people react, with wide eyes and the same feeling of “wow, it’s fate!” It was a beautiful story, and I know that no matter whom I meet or fall in love with, this particular sense of destiny cannot be recreated.

There’s something quietly tragic about that, about knowing I’ll never have that feeling of awestruck surprise again, at least not in that way.

When you are in a relationship, platonic or romantic, you create thousands of moments like that. You create a world that is entirely its own, inhabited only by you two. Memories and moments that can never come again are shared, and you are the only survivors. There are inside jokes and secret passwords, knowing smiles and the slight raise of an eyebrow that can constitute an entire conversation because you simply know what the other person is thinking.

It’s hard to imagine walking away from that. It’s hard to believe that anything could ever happen that would make that connection, that amazing foundation, that non-refundable chunk of your heart and your life, somehow not worth maintaining, or keeping.

But I’m learning that walking away isn’t the same as forgetting.

You see, people grow. They evolve. Sometimes they grow together, and sometimes they grow apart. Sometimes one grows, and the other keeps their head in the sand. Sometimes one refuses to become self-aware, refuses to acknowledge their own actions. Sometimes one realizes that the relationship has become toxic and codependent, and that for both their sakes, it can’t continue.

I won’t apologize for being that last person, and for realizing that an almost-decade of friendship was a really great thing for the first half, and then a long, drawn-out, painful death rattle for the last half.

I won’t apologize for forgiving, again and again, only to be wounded once more by the same actions — I learn lessons the very, very hard way, after all, and I can finally walk away knowing that I really, truly did give it a chance, multiple chances.

I won’t even be upset when that person tries to paint themselves as the victim, because I learned a long time ago that no matter what you do, you’re going to be the villain in someone’s story. I hold my truth and keep my path. Some people are in love with the idea of being a tragedy, and you can’t stay in their vicinity without somehow finding their blood on your hands, because their lack of self-responsibility and self-awareness will always win over your best intentions and well wishes. That’s OK, too. It’s who they are, and that’s fine — it’s also one of the many reasons that it’s time to walk away. Let them tell their own version of events, let them do whatever they need to sleep at night.

Hold your truth and keep your path.

Walking away isn’t quitting, or even saying that you no longer love that person. Quitting is accepting to stay in a toxic place, accepting the part that you never wanted to play, accepting a constant state of unhappiness because you’re too afraid to finally admit that you can’t live like this anymore.

Love is its own form of courage — and it is at it hardest and bravest when it means stepping away from the person you love, because that comes from a place of selflessness, not selfishness. Because you know that they won’t understand “I love you, so I’m leaving you.” Because you know that they’ll hate you for this. Because you know that perhaps they’ll struggle, or perhaps they’ll never have someone to shield them and protect them from the consequences of their actions ever again (Remember that bit about unhealthiness in a relationship? This is it). And that saddens you, because you only want the best for them.

But sometimes the best thing you can do for a person is allow them to fail, and to fall. Allow them to learn how to truly take care of themselves. Allow them to realize their actions have consequences. Allow them to grow and evolve, as painful as the process may be.

It’s OK to let go. It’s OK to be sad at the letting go, or even to just breathe a sigh of relief. It’s OK to choose yourself, after years of taking care of someone who has put their own wants and needs above your own for so long that they don’t even consider yours. You are not selfish, or wrong, or the bad guy. You are not any of the things that they place on your shoulders, unless you want to be. It was never your place to sacrifice yourself for the whim of another. It was never your destiny to stay in a place where you feel anxious, unhappy, or otherwise less-than. It was never your purpose to be the savior of another human being’s story. You were never meant to stand still, simply because the person beside you refuses to move into something more. You should never apologize for realizing this. Just hold on to your truth and walk your path.

And so I won’t. I won’t apologize for the good times, or even the bad. I won’t apologize for finally finding the strength to walk away, out of love for myself and for that other person.

To the friend I let go, whom I still love, whom I will always love, who is still one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned, I say this: I won’t forget the times we shared, and I will always love the person you were, and even appreciate how you shaped me into the person I am, even when the process was painful. There will never be another you in my life. Even now, I regret nothing. Our story was beautiful, and I am sad that it has ended.

But it did have to end. All stories do, in one way or another.

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Cait Moss

Written by

Cait Moss

I am incapable of doing anything is half-measures. Oddly, this is half-blessing, half-curse.

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