If you haven’t read “The Best of Me” and/or at least have seen the movie, trust me: it’s worth the read/watch. But for those of you that have, you know who Dawson Cole is and you’ve realized he is the ideal of every high school sweetheart and “The Best of Me” is the dream that every girl has: to basically love their “high school sweetheart” forever (even if some questionable stuff happened in the story).

For some girls, that is a reality. They met their one true love during high school and have that perfect relationship and either go to the same college, live near one another, have an amazing picture perfect long distance relationship and so on. Well, look on your life now and look at your old or soon to be old high school sweetheart. There are hundreds of reasons a high school relationship doesn’t work out. Sometimes we never truly realize that a relationship, or even a friendship to some point, can be too toxic and can eat away at us. Some people choose to never let go and try to hold on to a past relationship and believe by some miracle it will work out. Not saying that is your case, but what if it is? Girls, you don’t have to hold on to someone that’s wrong for you. There’s a point where you just have to let go of a person who is a negative impact in your life and there is a time for moving forward because there will be a positive impact. Will it hurt? Yes, but you know what? Once you emerge and really look back, you can see where things went right, but also where they went wrong.

For most of us girls, a high school love is a practice for the real thing, for finding true love. Those who have been lucky enough to find true love so young have been given a special gift, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t been given a gift as well. Your high school sweetheart could have taught you exactly what type of guy you should look for and also what you shouldn’t look for. There’s always a reason for someone to either stay in your life or move on. I’ve had that happen on a couple of occasions where I realized something wasn’t working (whether it was a relationship or even just a friendship). There’s always a point in one's life where they have to realize just because you are super close with one person at the moment doesn’t mean you’re stuck with them for life. That person could just have been sent to you to teach you something about yourself and then have to move on to other things.

Letting go is hard; it is a reality every person in the world will have to face at one point or another. What I’m saying to you is this: you don’t have to have a Dawson Cole at the end of your story (if you’ve read/seen “The Best of Me” you’ll understand). Letting someone back into your life or holding on to the idea that you two are meant to be may not be the best path for you to take. My message to you is that if you realize that a relationship isn’t working out or that you find yourself holding onto a relationship that didn’t work, let the person go. You will find yourself slowly but will surely able to heal from whatever pain or negative impact that person was holding over you, even if you didn’t realize there was that negative impact weighing down on you in the first place. I give you a message of hope that things will get better. Believe me, they will. It takes time, but you will become strong, and you will realize that you don’t need a Dawson Cole at the end of your story.