I know what your first thought was when you read the title of this article.

"Why is he writing about firing people? He's a teenager, he shouldn't be giving us business advice."

This isn't about that kind of letting go, it is about letting the toxic people in your life go.

Throughout our lives, we develop all kinds of relationships. Some of these relationships last for a long time, and some for only a little. However, one thing a lot of these relationships have in common is that at some point, they end. As our own lives change and we do things like go to college, move around and get new jobs. People can exit our lives in a lot of ways, whether it be from a breakup, not talking to a friend as much and losing touch, or something else. Some of these relationships stay in place, but start to outlive their time, and become detrimental to you.

Here's the thing. People change. A lot of people don't want to believe that, but it's true. I'll admit, I've changed since high school, and I think it's for the better. If we never change, life would be boring.

Some people, however, don't change. A lot of the time, these people are the ones who end up being the toxic influencers in your life. They are also the people that think that you will always be the same person that they first developed a relationship with. In some cases, they don't want to let your relationship go, no matter what. They'll try to make you start feeling guilty about changing and moving on from your past life because they don't want you to have changed, even though you already have.

You may be thinking that what I'm talking about is very specific. It is. I recently experienced the ending of a friendship that was long overdue to be finished. Our past was... complicated, to say the least, but we were very close. When I moved away to college, I was very honest with my friends. I told them that yes, college was going to change me, and that yes, our relationships might suffer because of that, but I would try my hardest to balance my new life and my life back home. However, this particular person didn't want to accept that. They made me feel bad for changing and leaving their friendship behind, even though I had warned them about it. I didn't do it on purpose, these things just happen, but once again, they had an idea of how I should be from years ago, and got mad when I didn't reflect that idea. We recently had an argument about our friendship, and some very manipulative and mentally abusive things were said, so I decided to end it completely.

The moral of this story, regardless of if you've dealt with a situation like this or not, is that you all learn that it's okay to let negative and toxic people in your life go. It's not fair to you to have to carry the burden of these people on you. You don't have to feel guilty about it. All they are doing is holding you back from becoming the best version of you that you can be. You will meet new and better people, and your life will go on, whether you believe it or not.