Milkshakes Melt, People Change

     So recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the people that are in my life and how they got there. And perhaps even more, I've been thinking about the people who aren't in my life, or at least aren't in my life in the capacity I would have them be in it.
     I'm sure everyone has at least one person who isn't as big a part of their world as they would hope. There's the family member that doesn't talk to us anymore, the "BFF" that never makes contact, or the guy or girl who was "the one" and ended up being nothing to us. There's the teacher that we never get to talk to after the school year ends, the Facebook friend who won't even give you a passing glance in real life, and the childhood friends turned enemies.
     When relationships don't turn out to be what we expected of them, we're hurt. We feel betrayed by the person, as if they've done us some extreme disservice by not realizing how important they were in our lives. We imagine we can make them feel guilty for pulling away ("when I'm not around anymore he'll realize how much he needed me for sure! He'll be crawling back on his hands and knees. HA.") even though in the eyes of the other person there may not have been any solidly established relationship to pull away from (or to go crawling back to).
     The thing we (or at least I) never seem to consider is that maybe some people were never meant to stay. Maybe some people are sent into our lives to be what we need when we need it most, and then to fade out once we have the skills to cope on our own (even if we don't feel like we do). Maybe some people come into our lives just to make connections, to lead us to other people who are meant to stay a while.
     Maybe, just maybe, there's some higher power who knows a little bit more about what I really need than I do. And maybe I should start trusting that that power knows what He's doing a little more often, because looking back I haven't really been let down yet. Things have changed and people have left but never without making a mark on my life and contributing to who I am today.
     If everyone we met stayed in our lives forever, we'd never form a truly deep relationship with anyone. We couldn't possibly have time to. But maybe by giving parts of ourselves away, living and loving and getting hurt, we learn over time who is meant to go and who is meant to stay, and we grow a little bit along the way.
     Maybe we find that we never really needed anyone else at all.