The Divorce Chronicles: The art of letting go
I’ve been hearing it over and over and over and over again. “Let go”, they say. They all say it. Whoever I talk to. Some more than others. Those who understand the utter impossibility try not to fixate on this idea, but they still bring it up.
No matter how hard you want to, you can’t “just let go”. Sometimes you have to hold on to the thorns biting into your bloody hands and sit in the blood a bit before coming into a realisation. Sometimes you just have to be. Loosening the grip isn’t always a choice, sometimes it has to come to the point of subconscious instinct. Sometimes, it takes a while to stop revolving your world around the comfort of its painful orbit.
People think that if you keep telling someone to “move on”, they will. You cannot will yourself into not caring all of a sudden. You can’t. You don’t.
You know what happens though, you don’t realise you are letting go when you actually start doing it. You start when you take the first step towards a new life, whether it is as simple as waking up at a different time or as drastic as moving to a new country. Both are steps, both are healing. You let go when you fall to your knees, unable to get back up, crying until you can no longer breathe, staring at the ceiling hoping it swallows you whole. You let go when you realise that this moment, this process, this path is the catalyst, the very thing that poems are written about.
If we are forced, we grip harder don’t we? We refuse, deny, become angry and resent. The harder you force letting go, the deeper you feel attached. So don’t tell yourself to let go, don’t tell yourself to move on. Let yourself cry, crumble, collapse, feel, destroy, break your very foundation. Fall into your pit, sit there, scream there, hurt there, die there. Die there to be reborn there.
If you don’t think you can let go yet, then don’t. Just take it minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Soon, you’ll realise a week, a month, a year has gone by. You are now able to look back, and smile. Smile at your strength, at your resilience, at your soul.
Healing is glorified and romanticised, when in fact it is possibly one of the most brutal yet beautiful paths you will ever endure. You will feel what you are afraid to feel, maybe even more. You will be scared, disappointed and shameful. You will confront your biases and your prejudices. You will take accountability. You have to be ready to be hated, shunned, cut out, isolated. You will not be able to sit in the lukewarm, mild discomfort, halfway living of life. You will shake with rage, trying to course correct to not feel like your entire life is disintegrating in front of your eyes. Feelings will show their origins, the moments you remembered and wished you didn’t remember. It’s going there, and then, it’s being freed.
There is a difference between recovering and healing. Your body recovers, but your soul has to heal. If you’re searching for what you had, who you were, where you were, you’re trying to recover. If you’re still idolising you’re past life, you’re trying to recover. Recovering is a return. Healing is nourishing, not comfort. Healing is unprecedented worth and power. Healing is stepping into a place you have never been before. Healing is a time to slow down, to simplify, to take it easier, savour. At times it may feel as though you are straying from your path, when in fact you are finding it. Healing doesn’t have to always be a forward motion, most times it is staying still, deep rest, stopping to reconsider where you want to go before trying to get there. You let yourself settle within yourself. Even if all you did was wake up and keep breathing, that is all you were supposed to do on that day. Healing is courage and grit intertwined. Healing is being proud of who you were on that day and how you showed up for yourself and only yourself. Rest, regenerate. Healing is quiet, unexpected, simple. You give yourself the greatest opportunity because ultimately, you return home to yourself.
