"Endings are sad, but important." - Famous In Love
Okay, laugh at me, a 27-year-old with a full-time job, for quoting a show in Freeform that teenagers watch - I'll make you laugh a little harder by letting you know I also watched Pretty Little Liars 'til the end and I have NO SHAME. Regardless of how stupid you might think the show is, this quote really struck a chord with me.
Endings can be so sad. Endings can tear you down. Endings can scare you so much that you don't let things end and you hold on just a little too long. Regardless of when things end or why they end, it's important to look back and know that things end for a reason, and to appreciate them for what they are while they lasted.
This can be so incredibly hard to do when things end badly. It could be a terrible job or an awful relationship. Either may have sucked so much out of you that you lost who you were in the process of being in it. A job could have tested your decision making or your work ethic. A relationship could have been manipulative and draining and on and off again for years and made you crazy. In the end, I think we can all agree that it was extremely important that those negative things in your life ended (if they haven't, please consider all angles and do what will make you happiest in the end).
When something was the best time of your life, it can still come to an end and this can be a happy sad kind of ending. It's like when you graduate college, or to more of an extreme, when you lose a family member you love. It's hurts like hell, and sometimes the pain can be completely unbearable and you don't think you'll ever be as happy as you were. With the ending of this, however, you can look back and appreciate the good and remember the good times because of what it taught you and because of the memories.
Either way, you need to see how important each relationship, stage, or anything in your life was and how important it was in it ending. By having something end, you have the time to reflect, you have the time to appreciate it and if you absolutely hated it, you can take away things from the experience that you know you won't ever stand for or put yourself through again.
Whether it be a good or bad thing that you went through, everything has to come to an end and it's up to you to find the positive in it. They're important so you can grow, so you can appreciate things you've gone through and so you can learn about yourself. Just always try to take away good things in every ending and try not to let the negatives ruin future experiences.