You Can Love Them And Still Let Go

I’ve always had this idea that “letting go” had to follow love out the door second. That you couldn’t truly accept a relationship’s end until the love you felt for this person waned completely, fading away into the backdrop of your life, their likeness only cropping up when you hear that one song play. Or when you pass that little restaurant you both used to haunt on early Sundays after the bar.

But I’m starting to think I’m wrong. Maybe, just maybe, love and letting go aren’t mutually exclusive.

I’m starting to realize you can love someone and still let go.

Heartbreak lingers.

It sticks around. Heartbreak is the unwanted houseguest who won’t leave and who is seriously putting a damper on your evening and preventing you from going to bed at a reasonable hour. It’s disruptive and frankly rude. I mean, can’t it take a hint?!

Of course, there are alternatives. You could ask it to leave. But you’re too polite for that, aren’t you? Sigh.

So what else?

You allow the heartbreak to stay as long as it needs.

Hell, you open up the damn guest room with the nice sheets and tell Heartbreak to leave its shoes by the door. You teach it to use the coffee maker and explain how the thermostat works if Heartbreak ever gets a little cold.

And then, you both learn to coexist.

Sure, you fumble around the kitchen for a while. Heartbreak loves to remind you that they never take their coffee black, that it needs to be drowning in cream and sugar. And didn’t you realize you could stack your dishes differently? I mean, MY GOD.

Nighttime the first little while is the worst, though. Heartbreak has you asking what you saw in them anyway, negating the many years you spent together. Maybe there were red flags the whole time, how didn’t you see? Maybe they never loved you at all. And why the heck are you still sleeping on your side of the bed? It’s only you now, didn’t you hear?

They’re gone.

Okay, so it’s not a perfect metaphor, but heartbreak kind of functions like that. It stays with you, usually longer than you’d like, but eventually?

You learn to live with it.

Soon enough, you’re dancing around the kitchen with ease, dodging Heartbreak’s digs and no longer clumsily bumping into the memory of their horrific coffee choices when you make your own. Soon, you’re taking up the whole bed, thank you very much.

And, eventually, you begin to acknowledge the signs of the end but you also don’t take away the good moments now. No. Those are for you both. Forever suspended in a time and place far from here but it happened.

And it was fucking beautiful, wasn’t it?

I think this is the most important part: You finally begin to accept what happened. Not just accept, but honor. You weren’t right for each other in the end but at one point, you were great together. At some point, you grew up and grew apart and how lucky are you that you got to experience them, even if it’s now in a past life?

This is the part where you realize you might still love them. It’s faded, it’s different. Or maybe it’s still burning, burning, burning strong. And yet…you’re still letting go.

Slowly but surely you’re allowing your life to be your own. You’re remembering without falling apart. You’re accepting. You’re hurting. You’re healing. You’re becoming your own.

They were just a character. They aren’t and won’t ever be your whole story.