Quite often when I write it is what I am feeling intensely at the moment and the words spill like blood from a fresh, deep cut.
When I revisit those same words, a day, a month, a year later, the emotions can still feel like a wound that has not been cauterised and I am transported back to the moment my thoughts were bared.
The feelings are not the same, but I am unable to cast an indifferent eye upon them. I find myself gazing at them from a safe distance, peering over the rim of that abyss, no desire to wade in, hip deep, to the pain.
**I initially posted this on Instagram but within a few moments it was deleted due to “Violation of community guidelines”. I’m not sure how they were violated as there is no revealing nudity nor anything explicit. Simply an artsy photograph I chose to use to articulate my writing.
Letting go isn’t giving up. It isn’t failing. It’s making an investment in your future. But we get stuck, do we ever. We cling to that which isn’t making us better, or whole. We do this because we still love the other person, or we’re scared, or nostalgic, or stubborn, or many other reasons. The why isn’t important, it’s what you do after you understand the why that matters.
It takes enormous effort to make that decision, to take those first steps and embark upon that path. But once you get over the pain of ripping off the band aids you have painstakingly applied for years, it becomes freeing. And that is a surprise itself.
Amid the pain and sadness, and yes, grieving, there is a lightness. Perhaps it is confidence that the right decision has been made, or maybe it’s because we are no longer in limbo. Going through each day, seeing a very different future on the horizon, but taking no steps toward it weighed us down. Our progress was inhibited. There was no forward momentum. When you are stuck like that, feelings fester and feel tight beneath the skin.
Letting go is hard and often it is a decision you know must be made, but reconciling heart and head can take time. We step around the minefields, we navigate our pain, until we know we are strong enough to tackle it head on. And when that happens, we loosen the tether that has held us in place, that has kept us from living our lives fully. There is a freedom in realizing and believing that within every ending is a new beginning.
