Letting Go

Why is letting go considered so hard? Why is it so difficult to let go of the past? Why do we feel the need to hold on to the past in order to validate our present? We move on because we cannot be miserable forever but we still don’t or can’t let go of the memories of our past. Those memories are proofs to the good times we had with someone. That someone can be a significant other, a friend or a family. We relive those memories again and again because we feel that only those can make us happy. We feel afraid to put ourselves again out in the open. Those memories act as a security blanket for us which we are afraid to lose and we keep on dwelling on the past. But in doing so we let go of our chance to make new memories. Its like we need to clean or reorganize the shelf in order to keep more stuff on it.

Whatever new memories we make, they might be good or bad. If they are good, we get more chances to smile and if they are bad, we only learn to cherish our past even more. So it’s a win-win situation for us. Then, why are we really so afraid to let go? No break-up is ever easy. First you deal with a pain so strong it consumes you. Your chest feels like it’s on fire— ragged and burning around the edges; after which, an emptiness that finds its way even into the smallest and darkest corners of yourself.Everyday you wake up with a hollow pit in your chest hoping only for that one person who has left you. You crave and try to hold on to the last left fibers of that person: your memories with him/her.

“If you want to fly in the sky, you need to leave the earth. If you want to move forward, you need to let go the past that drags you down.”

Its not like you don’t want to let go, you do. You ask for help from people around you but the harsh truth is that YOU ARE ALONE. No one but you can help you move forward. You need to find yourself before you let go. You need to fall in love with yourself all over again. As cliché as that sounds, in order to find yourself you need to first accept and love yourself. The more you try to forget, the more those moments sharpen in clarity and become almost palpable.

“In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.”

You cannot forget those memories as those were what once made you happy, you need to learn to live with it and still move forward. You cannot cling on those memories but at the same time cannot throw them out ina trash instead you let go; you let go of the power those moments have on you; you let go of your dependency on these memories. Instead you embrace them and accept them as a good part of your past. You live with them, relive them from time to time and again move forward to make some more.

“When you let go, you make place for something new”