Three or four years ago, I had a falling out with a close friend. A discussion ultimately ended in her giving me an ultimatum, one that I didn’t acquiesce to. After some time had passed and I realized how much I missed her, I reached out… and was basically told to go f**k myself. We haven’t spoken since.

Two years ago, I was deeply – and inadvertently – hurt by another friend. Though conversations followed, I never received the apology I felt like I needed. Things have been different between us ever since.

Last year, one of Tegan’s (12 years old at the time) friends suddenly told her, “I hate you and never want to see you again.” When I tried to talk to his mother (someone who I also considered a friend) about it to see if I could learn what was going on, she responded by promptly blocking me. We haven’t talked since, and to this day neither Tegan nor I know what we did wrong.

Last week, some random person attacked me in one of my bipolar Facebook groups. She didn’t like what I had to say, and she reacted. She wasn’t kind, and she wasn’t gracious. She was condescending and arrogant, and her comments stung.

What do all these people have in common?

They’re the weather.

I can’t control the weather.

The weather does what it wants.

The weather makes its own decisions.

The weather is not about me.

Unless I’m putting myself in the eye of a hurricane, the weather doesn’t even affect me.

My whole life, I’ve cared too much what other people think and do. I get my feelings hurt easily, I’m quick to react, I’m sensitive to a fault. Many people have tried to talk to me about this – including my therapist of two years – but while I could understand intellectually, I didn’t know how to stop it. Nothing really made it click for me until recently when I heard the weather analogy. It was a literal lightbulb moment for me, and made me go, “Oh. OHHHH!!”

They’re the weather.

All of us as humans, as long as we’re living with appropriate boundaries, are walking around with an invisible circle around us. We have the right, the responsibility, and the authority to control everything inside our circles. Everything and everyone outside the circle? It’s the weather, and out of our control.

And it takes practice. When I got the comment on Facebook, a comment that would have ordinarily completely derailed me for a week, I had to remind myself: She’s the weather. I’m not in charge. She can say what she wants, do what she wants, act how she wants. It’s not about me. That’s HER choice. HER circle. HER responsibility. If she wants to be rude to strangers on the internet, she’s free to do that. My job? Simply to decide how I will or will not react. I get to decide if I’m going to let it send me spiraling, or if I’m going to let it go. Strangers on the internet? The answer is always to let it go.

Game changer.

As for friends, and other closer relationships? It’s more complicated, right? There are real feelings involved. There’s history. It’s personal. But the same principle applies. All I can control is me. That’s it. Was I true to myself? Was I honest? Was I kind? Was I fair? If the answer to any of the above is no, that’s on me to fix. But if the answer is yes, well then I did what I could.

The rest is weather. I can get an umbrella if I need it, but I don’t have to get wet.