I Will Learn to Let Go

Letting go is never easy. We hold-on to objects that seem to hold so much meaning, to ideas that will never grow beyond a rich fantasy...and to people that show so much potential. We hold on. We grip with so much mental effort it is exhausting. This year, I am learning to let go.

As I sat, alone, in my tiny apartment, mid-December, 2020, surrounded by dismantled furniture, rolled up rugs, cardboard boxes and garbage bags, I held one piece of my life after another in my hands and decided whether or not it was worth holding-on to. Was it worth the space and effort it would ?take to move this thing to my new home? My two children were asleep in their shared room, after an exciting day seeing their new house, and the other person I loved was...absent. I assumed he was at the gym or maybe with his family, but all I really knew was he wasn't with me.

Item after item I held in my hands and considered if it was useful enough, beautiful enough, meaningful enough to hold-on to. About half made the cut, the rest being consigned to a donation box or a black, plastic bag.

When I finished, I looked around at the piles of boxes. I poured a glass of wine and sat, cross legged on my blue and beige rug in a room with nothing else but our ugly, skinny Christmas tree. And in the sparkle of the white, fairy lights I started to cry. Tears that welled up from my belly and spilled out my eyes. Hurt I felt in my throat and my jaw so strong and so painful it was everything I could do not to scream and wake the children.

Then I heard a key in the door and the man I loved walked in and stopped, frozen, taking me in. Me with my wet face and red eyes, sitting on the rug in the empty living room like we had when we moved in with nothing else, one year ago, almost to the day.

"Why are you crying?" he asked, as if nothing was wrong. As if he hadn't been gone for weeks. As if leaving this place, our place, shouldn't be painful.

I made an excuse. I was so relieved to see him, so happy I'd held on and understood and kept loving this damaged person, so relieved that he was here and I could loosen the grip my heart had been clutching so hard it was cracking and chipped in places. I got up, poured him a heavy glass of red and opened up our chess board on the rug.

He sighed as if this was a great inconvenience and I laughed his dramatics off. We played a game or two and then he got up, said he would come by to help me move tomorrow, and left again.

Isn't it strange how you can feel the connection between your heart and another. When they leave it's like a rope pulled too tight, straining and tightening the more distant they get. I collapsed by the door and cried heavy, painful tears. And when the wave of hurt passed and I came up for air, I sat, holding him in my heart and tried to decide if he was useful enough, beautiful enough, meaningful enough to hold on to.

I held on. I held on through Christmas spent with his family which turned traumatic and heartbreaking. Through New Years spent alone after my children went to sleep, exhausted and heading for sugar hang-overs, worrying about him and feeling like starting the year apart was not a good sign. I had made a promise years ago, to keep my best-friend alive. To help him be happy. That friend became my lover and now had become my biggest source of pain.

This year I will learn to let go.

I will learn to let go of the physical need for closeness to a person who actively pushes me away. I will learn to let go of the promises I made to be there, to save him, to be only his, because he is not the same person I made those promises to. That person would have never hurt me, screamed at me, left me lonely...that person is gone and may never come back, consumed by the illness in his mind and unable or unwilling to seek help.

I will learn to let go of the future I saw before us, to live in the moment and be grateful for all the wonderful things in my life.

I will learn to let go of the mistakes I made, to forgive myself for being imperfect, and for letting emotion override my logic more than many times.

I will learn to let go inch by inch, loosening the tension in that connection, unwinding the band around my heart until one day it slips off, almost imperceptibly and I can breathe. I will step confidently along the tightrope that our lives too often are, trusting myself to find balance, free from things that are no longer useful enough, or beautiful enough or meaningful enough to keep a hold on me.