“It’s hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember.” ~ Unknown

 

I know it rocked you to the core when they left.

You thought you had known heartache and come out on the other side, until you were left clutching nothing but the battered and war-torn pieces of your heart in your hands.

Everyone keeps telling you to just let it go—just let them go—but no matter how hard you try you just can’t seem to disown your love for them as easily as they seemed to be able to disown you.

You just can’t understand how someone who meant so much to you could think so little of you in the end.

I know it pisses you off when everyone tells you to just “let go” because you want to. You want the pain to stop and you want to move on with your life, or what’s left of it, but for some reason you can’t seem to fully separate yourself from the memories, the love, the dreams and the feelings.

If it was so simple you would have done it in the beginning and saved yourself all of the pain and sleepless nights.

How does one “let go” of feelings anyway?

I know that you’re questioning your worth and your place—you look in the mirror and wonder what it is that causes everyone to turn away. And as hot tears begin to stream down your face, you question yourself and the universe.

Will it always be this way? Will I ever be able to recover? Will there ever be another?

I’m not going to tell you to let them go or to get over it, or even that time heals all wounds, because that’s sugar-coated bullsh*t coming from a world afraid to live and love all the way.

To let go is an illusion that sets unfair standards and expectations—too many are left feeling inept when they’re already feeling like they don’t measure up and aren’t enough.

Love isn’t something we’re meant to just toss away. It’s not something that can be turned on and off like a tap, and it isn’t something that simply dies with time, distance or even discourse.

You don’t have to require someone to be present to love them—there doesn’t have to be conditions placed upon your love. Fighting the love you feel for someone is fighting against yourself, against your own heart. It hurts just as much as losing someone.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

This time hurt more than any of the others—that’s true. I won’t tell you that you’re wrong or try to minimize your pain.

Each time you loved, your love was real and the heartache was valid. Each time you lost someone, it hurt. When someone leaves our lives it’s painful and we grieve, but the memories and thoughts of them don’t just leave—the space they once held within our hearts does not just disappear with them.

The truth is, you tore deeper into yourself—every time you loved and lost you carved out new spaces within the cavities of your heart.

If we happen to love a lot of people, we can end up digging really deep, and the deeper we get the more deeply we will feel loss—but we will also be capable of deeper joy.

Sometimes pain can cause us to lose perspective. It’s hard to see clearly through the blur of hot, salty tears and the pain that comes with heartache.

You’re holding pieces of your heart in your hands because you tore down its very walls to create space that’s no longer physically occupied, and I know that’s scary and maybe you want to regret it because the space feels empty—you feel empty.

Being vulnerable is scary, but don’t give your power away. Don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re a pioneer in a shallow world and an architect of love.

I know you want to stop renovating and expanding your heart, but don’t build walls back up like we so often do when someone leaves—letting go is just another way of closing yourself off.

You don’t have to wall up parts of you once occupied by people who are no longer there. You can dig deep and love again, because you’re meant to. It might feel like love will never come back around or that you can never deal with it if it does, but love is meant for each of us—at some point someone is going to come along and they’ll see you, whether you’ve built walls back up or not.

They’ll try to scale your walls because the truth is those walls aren’t even supposed to be there in the first place—we aren’t meant to live half-truths or love partway.

The last thing you want is for this someone to hurt themselves trying to get to you, trying to scale the walls that don’t need to be there, to willingly fill what you thought would remain empty.

Instead of letting go of the love for those who’ve crossed your path, let yourself tear down your walls—let yourself approach life with an open-concept heart. Love them, and those that came before them and those yet to come.

 

Author: Amanda Dobby

Image: PiXFav/Flickr

Editor: Nicole Cameron