On letting go

an unsettling feeling always follows when we think about letting go: could be our old acquaintances, a place we have called home for the longest time, or maybe the school we have been to for as long as we can remember, or an internship we did in the summers, or our old ways and habits, our likes and dislikes, our way of dressing or long held ideals and morals, probably because we have known ourselves to be that way for the longest time; we have defined and perhaps identified ourselves with those things and places for so long that letting go feels like letting go a part of ourself, a part of our being, hence the unsettling feeling: the daunting feeling of losing ourself. But we don’t realize that the things we feel so accustomed to as ‘being us’, sometimes slowly morph into ‘being what others know us as’, and that thought scares us. We are afraid of changing that guise, of having to step out of it, being forced to create it over again, which doesn’t seem to go well with us, because we would rather continue with the perception we once created in the minds of others than change it to what makes us happy in that moment. Even though, our happiness and comfort is the only thing that is supposed to matter. Yet, as fragile as we are when it comes to feelings, the mere thought of not being the way we have always known ourselves to be, confounds us anyway, and in that, we fail to realize how much of beauty and actual strength lies in letting go. In giving your all to something for the while that it lasts. In being vulnerable and letting someone so close. In lowering your walls. In realizing the fatality of holding on. and in the end, in moving on. In choosing your mental health and peace over anything else. In letting go. In choosing yourself.