If I'm being totally honest with you, letting go is something I was never taught how to do. Was anyone?
It's this magical phrase that literally everyone says as their go-to piece of advice. Friends, family, grades, relationships, you name it, I've probably been told to let go of it.
When it comes to the little things, letting go in my opinion is relatively easy. A sleepless night, a bad test grade, a little argument with a friend, all easy things to let go of.
It's the deeper emotions behind those things that make letting go particularly hard for me. Best friends, detrimental events, and romantic relationships, among other things.
Even when something is so clearly not my fault or out of my control, I still seem to constantly think about it as if I can magically go back in time and change the events or opinions that led up to it.
But then I stop myself. Those events happened and there's a reason for them. I hope. I think.
I think the worst pain I've endured in my relatively short life so far is not the torn hamstring I managed to give myself while slipping into the splits, but rather my first heartbreak. Or for lack of better words, my "letting go" moment of someone I knew wasn't good for me.
There are repercussions however. Nothing is as simple as I let something or someone go and am fine. No one is ever fine.
Currently, I'm working on "letting go" of someone. I know it's the right thing to do for my sanity. Well that, and, I want to be fought for and I wasn't. I am worth fighting for. Although I may be a little saner, I'm still sad. But I don't feel sorry for myself. I choose the harder path because I knew it was the right path. Life is hard as I've mentioned before, but letting go of the past, or the things that once were you but no longer are, is key here. I'm not who I was three years ago, or one year ago, or even two weeks ago. I'm constantly changing, and if I allow myself to keep people in my life that can't acknowledge the depth of my personality and my fight to succeed in happiness, I'll never be happy. One person is not going to define my happiness or my ability to believe I can succeed.
It's easy to look back and want what you once had. I believe I lived a more carefree life just a few years back, but I also know my hardships and failed relationships have taught me to be who I am. I may not be as carefree, but I am more mature. I still make mistakes and see the old me coming out in the new me. I can be slightly clingy, psychotic, and overbearing but it's all from a place of love. These things seem so childish to me because I've been doing them since I was a child. It's only normal that I would exhibit these behaviors later on, but in a slightly smaller dose just due to who I am. My inner carefree child is still in there learning how to let go one day at a time.
Letting go of something or someone takes effort. It's not some easy task in which you say "I let that go" and you magically feel better. It's the effort to still be nice if you see someone you let go of and restraining yourself from texting the person and moving on in the best ways you know how. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't but it's the mere fact that you tried something in order to feel better that matters. It's ok to slip up.
Letting go is hard. We live in a world of technology. Everything we don't want to see never fails to appear in our lives in some way or another. Although I'm not the happiest when I see things I don't want to on social media, I try to find the good in it. The band-aid may be ripped off a little too soon, but it just teaches me to handle bad news, maybe even helps me let go.
I'm finding comfort in knowing that letting go is hard, I like the challenge because once I finally do let go, I know I'll feel even better.
And to the people and things we all try to let go of but have issues doing... I hope (you/they/it) and/are very very happy.
