“The past is in the past. It isn’t meant to last.”

– Lauren Mayberry, CHVRCHES, Asking for a Friend

I know you’ve heard it a million times over. I have too.

When one door closes, another one opens.

It’s an opportunistic saying, meant to help you look on the bright side and remain optimistic that change is for the best.

What I’ve realized about myself recently is that I actually prefer to live in a revolving door. I do the same things over and over, keeping the door open for as long as I like. When I get attached, I find no reason to leave.

It’s probably best not to get attached. At least to the extent I normally do. But I always tend to throw myself wholeheartedly into the things that excite me most. That make me feel the most alive.

Naturally, that comes with a curse.

That is – I’ve often struggled to accept life’s grandest of changes. It hits me hard. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes for months.

Battling all of that the past few months has taught me the harsh lesson that I should have already known from years of listening to CHVRCHES.

The past is in the past, it isn’t meant to last.

Perhaps it takes me longer than most to let go. Perhaps I need others to carry me home. But the only way forward is to accept the change. To, more or less, celebrate the end. To scan for those new doors, and fearlessly open them. To even go one step further, and leap through the door if it feels like the right time.

The only thing we can do with change is to accept it.

I’ve often tried to fight back. To work all the angles until I’ve exhausted myself.

In most cases, working all the angles only broke the protractor completely.

If there’s something needing to be let go, fighting for it to stay alive seems to only result in liquid death.

It’s best, it seems, no matter how difficult it may be, to let go.

Sometimes, you can go back to the same door and open it again. If it’s meant to be that way, I believe that the door can open again. When the time is right.

But speaking from experience, trying to go through a closed door only leaves you with more of a headache.

It’s not about closing the door forever. No one wants to say never.

Knowing how invested and attached I get, sometimes I feel like I have to tell myself never.

But in that famous saying about doors – when one door closes another opens – it’s not the first door that’s important. It’s the second one. The first door is almost irrelevant. Only useful as a springboard. As a rocket launcher toward a new, open one.

It’s all about the new beginnings. It’s about accepting the reality and accepting that nothing you do or say can change the past. It’s all about looking up to the future and seeing what might come now.

After all, the past is in the past. It isn’t meant to last.