Letting Go of the Right Thing

“It must have been recognized that to go forward there is always something that has to be let go of, moved beyond, given up, or 'forgiven' to enter the larger picture”

~ Richard Rohr,

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Weeks after my first relationship ended I still had memories of him around my apartment – pictures, stuffed animals, frivolous trinkets that only held meaning because they were from him. “They're part of my decor,” I protested to my friend who questioned the lingering presence. “If I put them away there will be a hole in my apartment!” My friend pointed to his heart and said “Or a big ol' hole in here.”

Letting go can leave one feeling empty inside as it is often meant to create space for something new or different. What if there isn't something new to fill that emotional space right away? I suppose then it may be true that “time heals”; and like a packed wound, it may be from the inside out, slow, steady, sometimes painful or with an irritating itch!

However a perhaps more important question has come to my mind on this topic in the past few weeks: How can we be sure we are letting go of the right thing?

Truth:

I let go of the hope instead of the hurt.

While listening to music the other day, Anna Nalick's song Wreck of the Day came on. She got to the line “If this is giving up, then I'm giving up, giving up - On love” and I broke down. I realized that I have been holding onto the pain of past break-ups, and letting go instead of the hope of future love. Further, I packed and healed that previously hope-filled emotional space with protective bitter cynicism masked as independent realism.

I wrote a piece a few years ago when I first started to realize that I was losing hope:

“...hope of finding someone who'd stay when things got tough; hope of falling in love again; hope of being swept off my feet; hope of not spending the rest of my life without a relationship, without someone to share it with. I gave up hope, and convinced myself that I no longer really wanted that. Or at least, that I would be happy without it.
And yeah, I'm sure I would be happy without it.
But I'm not so sure that I want to be without it...”

I ended that piece by saying: “I gave up hope. But... maybe hope didn't give up on me.”

And I believe that now! I have been working on letting go of the right thing - the pain and bitter cynicism - and am finding that hope is among the things slowly healing and re-filling the opening space. A more mature, realistic hope that continues to embrace the possibility of being happy “without” - but hope none-the-less!

I'm so glad in this moment that letting go is a continual process of life's journey. So that I can begin to let go of the right thing, and find my way back to things I'd rather have held on to.