LET IT GO

Pain is a difficult thing to manage. The more people you meet, the more pain you see. The more days you wake up and open the blinds to the world, the more you open yourself up to experiencing pain. I believe we all work to avoid this thing we call pain as much as we can through defense mechanisms. We put up emotional walls stronger than iron ore compounded into steel. Nevertheless, being human means inevitable disappointment whether it be from heartbreak, loss, or failure.

It is a difficult thing to accept — that no one is ever really happy for more than a day or a fleeting instant. Getting all the joyful and exciting moments, people, and memories also means dealing with the scary, discouraging, and lonely ones. But, what I have found from listening to the silence of others, is that pain is difficult to accept, still though, even more, is just being okay.

The hardest thing to do is to live in the moments between the good times because we have been taught that pain is just around the corner. Your best friends won’t be your best friend forever. Sunlight is always followed by rain. Every weekend ends on another Monday. We stop cherishing the beauty of everyday life and instead, actively seek a constant drizzle in hopes of preparing ourselves for the incoming storm.

I recently read a book about self-sabotage called The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest. In the book, Wiest speaks about how we tend to hold ourselves back from living the life we really want and deserve. Funny enough, I absorbed nearly none of the lessons embedded within the pages at the time. It was only a month later when I sat on the beach during a rainy evening and felt entirely detached from the life I identified so strongly with, that I fully understood the meaning of Wiest’s words.

No matter how much we resist the truth… it sits there, staring at us in the face, rolling its eyes at our blindness. Most of the time, our pain is self-created. I see it now. Every day, there are millions of people in the world holding grudges against those they feel wronged by secretly yearning for their attention or apology to simply be seen. Every morning, there are men and women obsessively weighing their cereal, and subsequently their own bodies, placing their worth on numbers to numb their lack of control. Every night, there are those scrolling through old pictures, rewatching the same videos, and stalking curated profiles of people that have left them behind. I understand — all of it. I have been there too.

From a young age, we learn that pain equates to attention. When you fall down, there is naturally someone there to pick you back up. Yet, when you’re standing on your own, people tend to pass you by. Ultimately, this craving for safety is why we conjure issues. It is not to say that real problems do not exist, for we live in a world of famine, war, and disease. But, for many of us, the problems we have stick because we refuse to let them go.

Being an overthinker and a highly sensitive individual, I understand how frustrating it can be when someone tells you to “let it go”. Our feelings are not last night’s trash we can dump and expect someone else to carry away. They are real and deep-rooted. So, I am not forcing you to let anything go, rather, I am giving you permission to. It is not supposed to be easy. It is supposed to feel a bit empty, but also cathartic; a deep clean of a life we ourselves have allowed to become a jumbled mess.

As I pack for college, there will be the things I choose to take with me and others I leave behind. I will pack my clothes and notebooks and stuffed animals, but I think I’ll store away my grudges, insecurities, and unhealthy habits on my highest shelf. Or, at least I will try to. A fresh start means an opportunity to put the lessons I have learned to the test. This summer, I have learned more about forgiveness — about forgiving others, and, at the same time, forgiving myself. My life will never be perfect, but if I have the opportunity to let go of the things that bother me … I can construct my own version of perfect: healthy, kind, and happy.

Happy Living

“But happiness is not something you can coach yourself into. Happiness is your natural state. That means you will return to it on your own if you allow the other feelings you want to experience to come up, be felt, be processed, and not resisted.” -Brianna Wiest