“It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head.”
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About this quote
Wanting someone back can feel like a personal crime, and that shame makes you hold on harder. When you punish yourself for feeling, you keep doing the very thing that keeps the wound open. Ask yourself which part of this pain is actually yours and which part is the other person leaving. Say the feeling out loud to one trusted person, stop the small habit that keeps you tethered, and give yourself permission to stop apologizing for wanting.
When to use it
- After the breakup, when I kept rereading his texts at 2 AM, I told my roommate I felt like Rollins described and asked her to block his number on my phone.
- When my sister moved away and I was clinging to calls, I said the line aloud at dinner to stop pretending my grief was a moral failure.
- After losing the client I’d been chasing, I remembered the quote and stopped sending desperate follow-up emails that made me feel smaller.
- After the coach benched me for the season, I used the quote to admit I wanted to be wanted and then quit replaying every missed play in my head.