The Art of Letting Go

by Rania Naim

Some endings are not bad; sometimes they are not even endings, just bridges to new beginnings.

They are your maybe people, your someday people, your ‘what-if-in-a-different-world’ people, who offer the possibility you’re lacking in this one.

Life is the longest thing we’ll ever do, but it also goes by quick. I do believe you should love the wrong person and experience heartbreak because it makes you stronger and smarter the next time around. But don’t waste too much time loving someone who doesn’t make you feel whole, don’t spend time with someone who makes you wish you’d rather be single.

This is my subtle resignation to our downfall. This is the crack running between our two hearts that turned into a valley and engulfed us. It’s my acceptance of all I couldn’t bridge.

This is my knowing life goes on. Knowing that someday I will not think of love as a feeling that’s exclusive to you and I, as crazy as that seems to me right now. That eventually I’ll meet someone new – someone who loves the foods you hate and laughs at things you don’t find funny and appreciates the parts of me that you once left undiscovered. That some days, in the early morning hours, I’m going to wake up beside them and forget – just for an instant – that it is not your body tangled in mine. This is me knowing that those moments will defeat me – that I’m going to need to practice standing at the edge of your abyss without falling in completely. This is my hoping the discrepancy shrivels with time.

This is me knowing that I have to let you go. That no matter how much I love you or how hard we work at this or how badly we both want each other to be happy, we are never going to be the right partners for each other. This is my acceptance that the best things are never straightforward and that I want you to take whatever crooked, twisted path you need to take if it will lead you towards your dreams. This is me knowing that I have to do what’s right. That sometimes the best thing you can do for someone you love is to let them go – to do more, feel more, be more than the person they ever could ever have become by your side.

I truly hope that you celebrate the fact that you are not for everyone, that you are not impressing the kinds of people who were built on the foundations of a sad world. If there is anything you do, please, let yourself rejoice in the fact that you do not fit in, that you think differently, because there is a chaos that laughs inside of you and it is going to change lives.