I Have a Hard Time Letting Go

We sometimes cling to more than we should

When it comes to “letting go,” even when it’s for my own good, I have a hard time. My nature is to want to hold onto more than I should, like the following:

Home

I left home nearly eight years ago. I left behind my parents, friends, lovers, and the 23 years that was my life. I needed to start over. It was the toughest hurdle I’d ever had to overcome. I remember the first month after I moved to London. I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror I shared with nine other people, repeating the sentence “I can do this” over and over again until a point when I had to swallow my tears. I was alone, homesick, and desperate. No friends, no helping hands, no comfort.

I stepped into a new world that held so many great experiences for me. Adventures that lifted me up higher than I’d ever been, laughter that was more robust than I’d ever experienced, and financial stability I’d never known before. Not to mention the wonderful people I couldn’t have met in any other way.

I left home to learn how to live without it. Once you do that, you can create your own home wherever you want it to be. However, in order to get there, you need to let go of the “known and familiar” in order to find it again.

Friends

I knew a guy once. We went to high school together. We smoked cigarettes, listened to hip-hop, and got drunk when we got dumped. He helped me when my first love ended. I was so heartbroken that I could barely sit through a history lesson. I was nauseous, dizzy, and weak. He was there for me when the woman who I thought was the love of my life cheated on me. He helped me get up. I was there for him when he had a nervous breakdown while he was drunk.

We were there for each other for every laugh, party, concert, football match, fight, and melancholic Sunday afternoon. He was like a brother to me.

I fucked up. The desire I felt for a woman who later broke my heart into tiny pieces blinded me. I couldn’t see that love was temporary and friendship was permanent.

I don’t know him anymore. I know that he’s married to a wonderful girl and has a daughter he would die for. But we no longer listen to hip-hop or smoke cigarettes together. He was my best friend who turned into my biggest regret.

I have a hard time letting go of friends like he was to me. I don’t know if I can ever overcome that.

I’m a gardener of my feelings: I shield them with conscious thoughts, nourish them with sweet memories, and water them with cautious care.

Control

Control is the warden of my life. It manages my relationships, peace of mind, and daily tasks. It’s an artificially created illusion that provides a comfort zone that helps me to be organized and functional.

Giving up control is like unleashing a wild animal that grew so close to your heart that you never want to let it go. But I know it doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t own it. It’s an imaginary leash I put on reality, knowing that it can lacerate at any time.

Control gets rid of me before I can get rid of it, and when that moment comes, I need to stop fighting to hold it back.

Feelings

I’m a gardener of my feelings: I shield them with conscious thoughts, nourish them with sweet memories, and water them with cautious care.

I’m not a spiritual person, but the attributes of the Scorpion zodiac sign fits me perfectly. I love or hate, there is no in-between. I often become obsessive and hold onto pain as much as I hold onto joy. However, there comes a point when emotions proliferate and become uncontrollable.

But in the end, I need to cut them down if I want to move forward in my life.

Love

I knew a girl once. We swore to love one another forever, which turned out to be six and a half years. In those years, we helped each other grow and become adults. I was there for her when her father said that he wanted a boy. He was there for me when I had my first panic attack. We eased each other’s anxiety. We graduated high school and moved in together.

She was the only one I could count on when all my friends turned their backs on me. She showed me that different loves exist. She also taught me how they can destroy a person. She was proof that nothing ever lasts forever, no matter how hard a concept that is to accept.

Love is powerful and toxic, and also addictive. I was clean for almost ten years. I spent most of that time learning how to let go and not get attached. I was observing how people change and transform into complete strangers. I was trying to understand how time heals wounds and steals memories.

Some things aren’t meant to last. Home, Friends, Control, Feelings, Love — these are all just concepts we create in our head to cling onto. Yet, at some point in our lives, we’ll lose every single one of them, but they’ll find us again whether we allow them to or not.

I discovered my second home in London, and I regained control after I lost everything I had for 23 years. I developed unexpected feelings, found new friends, and fell in love again. Acceptance doesn’t come easy, but for once, I will try to overcome my stubbornness and take my own advice. I don’t think letting go will ever be easy for me, but perhaps, I shouldn’t fight it so hard anymore.