When Something Is Ending, Please Let Go

One of my favorite authors of all time, Junot Diaz, sums up everything you need to know about relationships from his book This is How You Lose Her in two single sentences.

“And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.”

Ouch.

I’ve found myself in this situation so many times. The end is coming and I can feel it, they can feel it, everyone else can probably see it, but I refuse to go down without a fight. I start sending my thoughts back to the beginning, to the honeymoon phase, and if I can just get them to remember that, everything will be fine.

Right?

Right. But it won’t. And somewhere deep down we know that. We understand that. We even accept it. But we won’t act on it, not yet, not until we can prove for certain that it’s really and truly over.

But when we fight that hard to the end, when we argue enough with ourselves and that person and the entire world around us, we cause too much damage. We break things on our way out. We shatter not only the exact thing we were trying to mend, but our image as well.

When we fear the end, when we retreat back to the beginning, we are operating under a sense of urgency. We are terrified of losing what we have because we have no idea what life will be like without it. When we’re operating under a sense of fear, we are not our best selves. We know this. And yet, we do it anyway because we are so convinced we’ll be the exception to the rule.

Who knows, maybe this will be the one successful time. Maybe we can bring some of that back, even when it seemed so close to the edge. Maybe we can salvage something. But we’re really only prolonging the inevitable, and I think we secretly know that.

We’ve got to let it go, friends. We’ve got to start believing the signs and accepting our reality. It’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t make us worth any less or any more. It says nothing about who we are on a deeply personal level. All it says is that something is coming to an end, and we have to learn to be okay with that.

Don’t try and race back to the beginning. Don’t try and make someone feel something they don’t. Don’t try and romanticize or justify your current situation. Accept it for what it is. Acknowledge the truth of where you’re at.

Say goodbye, let it go, and move on.