The thing I've learnt about letting go is this

It doesn't happen all at once like we think it does. You don't actually wake up one day and everything is suddenly, magically better and you don't know how or why but you don't hurt. It's not quite like that.

It's more like taking two steps forward, three steps forward, one backward and so on... Until you look up and you're there, and you look back and the person you've been holding onto is so far away that you can't run back to them anymore, and a part of you doesn't want to. It's like uncurling your fingers one at a time, until your hands are empty. Sometimes, your fist is going to clench reflexively - some days you're going to want nothing more than to run back to that person, despite whatever happened between you - and on those days you have to start from scratch, opening each finger until your empty palms are turned down.

Letting go is not easy. Grieving is not easy. I know these things to be true, but you know what else I know to be truer? That holding on to someone who has let go of you is even harder than letting them go. You are hanging onto the rope so tightly that you're blistering. You're tying yourself up in the rope like you're going to use to hang yourself, and if you keep this up, you will hang yourself with the rope and they will not be there to untie you.

This is not what I wanted. A year ago feels like a thousand feelings ago, two different people ago. A year ago feels like some alternate dimension, like some world where those things can happen that is not here but not there either. A year ago is immortalised in memory - two kids on the backseat of a car with no resentment and nothing to let go of. Two different kids.

I am nostalgic, but I am strong. I am not grieving anymore. I can listen to our songs, and I have no desire to reopen a door for you with the intention of seeking some closure that doesn't exist. And, yes, sometimes I relapse and those are the days I document the most... but most days, I am an open palm. And those are the days I hold out for, even on days when I am clenched fist.



I went to the beach two days ago, and sat on the sand and had that "aha!" moment when I realised that this life, my life, all these things; they're all transient. There will be a day when I don't exist, and the people who knew me will not exist, and I will be a block of stone in a yard of graves of people who don't really exist anymore either. The things I feel - the good, the bad, the ugly, the really ugly - will not matter. The days I spent curled under purple comforter, both too empty and too full to cry, and the days I tipped my head back and let laughter spill out from inside me... none of these days will be remembered. Everything goes, and I'm trying to be at peace with that. Everything goes. Even me, and even you. It will all go - washed away like the sands in the tide. And I have to let it all go.