Why I Just Can’t Give a Sh*t About You Anymore; A Break-Up Letter

“…We ask our­selves, who am I to be bril­liant, gor­geous, tal­ented, and fab­u­lous? Actu­ally, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your play­ing small does not serve the world. There’s noth­ing enlight­ened about shrink­ing so that other peo­ple won’t feel inse­cure around you…” ~ Mar­i­anne Williamson

Dear You,

I have never been afraid of the trap­pings of suc­cess. I’d like some fame, some money, some­one to ask my opin­ion on world issues and value my feed­back, some­one to hand me a fancy coconut shell drink on my very own trop­i­cal island.

I have never been afraid of try­ing some­thing new or dif­fer­ent or seem­ingly impos­si­ble. I’m not afraid to fail…I’ve failed over and over in my life and stood up and brushed myself off and started again.

What I am afraid of, what keeps me from my ulti­mate great­ness, is you. Yep…you. I want to make sure that I am not shin­ing my light too brightly because I don’t want to make you feel bad. I don’t want you to think nasty things about me, like I’m a show off or I think I’m bet­ter than you in some way.

I don’t want you to judge me. I want to come in under the radar, so that I can inspire you just enough so that you like me and are com­fort­able around me. I don’t want to chal­lenge you in any way. I want you to feel OK where ever you’re at. I put your com­fort, your needs above my own…and I don’t even know you.

Now, of course this isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I brought into it. I fol­lowed the rules that our soci­ety tends to offer; please me and get a gold star, eat all the food on your plate and get desert, don’t start nothin’ and there won’t be nothin’.

Besides, it was eas­ier that way…you didn’t expect all that much from me and so…I didn’t expect all that much from me either. Every­one is happy, right?

Except…not really. I’m actu­ally not that happy. I don’t like the world I see around me. I worry that my chil­dren won’t have a future. I worry that no one is teach­ing our chil­dren peace. I worry that our children’s world is so pol­luted with chem­i­cals and guns and rhetoric that they don’t stand a chance of mak­ing some­thing of their lives. I worry that we’re screw­ing up our envi­ron­ment so badly that life as we know it today will not exist in the next 20 years. I could go on…

But what can I do?!…You know how much I care about you and what you think about me so if I take a stand, I’m sure to offend at least a few of you out there. If I jump up and say, “Hey, this is wrong! We have to do some­thing to change this world!” I’m sure to ruf­fle a few feath­ers and you know how I hate ruf­fling feathers.

How­ever, I have a con­fes­sion to make…there’s a secret I’ve been keep­ing from you. A cou­ple years ago…I started see­ing some­one. Some­one who told me that I was strong. Some­one who told me that I was pow­er­ful. Some­one who told me that I could change the world, if I really wanted to.

And I wanted to believe them. I did, but, it just didn’t seem true. And not only that, it didn’t seem to fit into the nice lit­tle life I’d built for myself. If I stood up and screamed “STOP!” at the top of my lungs you would look at me dif­fer­ent. You might not buy the picket fence and the 2.5 kids and the dog in the yard. If I embraced this sup­posed power I had…what would you think? So I made myself quiet and still and didn’t rock the boat.

And yet, the pain con­tin­ued to push until the vision began to pull.

I was then given the oppor­tu­nity to really spend some qual­ity time with myself and this other person…not only that but this other per­son intro­duced me to still more peo­ple who told me the same thing the first per­son did…that I was strong, that I was pow­er­ful, that I could change the world.

Not only that…these peo­ple told me that it was my man­date, that it was my truth, it was my pur­pose, my duty to shine my light and shine it as brightly as I could. They handed me the keys to my own king­dom and said,

“You can do this. We believe in you.”

So here’s the hard part about this let­ter. It’s not you…it’s me. See I am actu­ally begin­ning to believe them, for real. For real. And I just don’t see how I can care about what you think any­more. It’s tak­ing away from my abil­ity to fol­low my path, to dis­cover my true pur­pose, to live my des­tiny, to shine as brightly as I need to shine to change the world. And I know that’s not what you want..is it?

And I really feel I need some time. I need time to explore this amaz­ingly pow­er­ful per­son that I am. I need time to exam­ine my own light, to see what I have to offer. I need to plant some roots and make space for my light in my heart and mind, to learn how to live with it, grow it, nur­ture it, pro­tect it and watch it blos­som. Then I will fig­ure out how I can best use my light to be in ser­vice to humanity.

So instead of say­ing you won’t hear much from me, I’m gonna say, you will. You. Will. Hear. From. Me. And when you do, know that I am light, I am love and I am embrac­ing myself so that I can be fully in my power.

“As we let our own light shine, we uncon­sciously give oth­ers per­mis­sion to do the same. As we are lib­er­ated from our own fear, our pres­ence auto­mat­i­cally lib­er­ates oth­ers.” ~ Mar­i­anne Williamson

We can still be friends. Who knows, some­day you might look at me and think, “Boy, I wish I had what she has.” And maybe you’ll ask me how I got it. And then maybe I can help you real­ize that you are strong, you are pow­er­ful and that you can change the world too, that shin­ing your light is your man­date too…and maybe at that point-we can head off into the sun­set and do it together.

by Elisa Van Arnam

Elisa Van Arnam is a wife, mother, writer and co-founder of SoulKu; an inspi­ra­tional con­cep­tual card com­pany ded­i­cated to help­ing peo­ple BE THE CHANGE. Elisa is also the co-author of One Namaste a Day, a SoulKu blog­ging adven­ture about see­ing the light in others.

Elisa Van Arnam

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