The Volatility of Letting Go
Surrendering to the process.
If we orbited the same circles in Chicago during the summer of 2021, you’ll know the sweet sort of magic that time was characterized by. The collective energy was near manic; everyone I knew felt so alive. I’d quit my job, and spent those summer months dancing around the city with my friends, drinking beer and eating French fries, going to shows and being in love, and experiencing the kind of unexpected adventures that only happen when you’ve made yourself available for life to happen through you.
If I really think about the details of that summer, I’ll also remember how raw the heartbreak was, and how real the anguish. I’ll remember the drama as well as the lightness; the tears as well as the starry-eyed enchantment. That summer, I felt it all: the simple perfection of jumping into Lake Michigan with people I adored, and the jarring longing for certain things to be different than they were. All that felt good was equally intense as all that did not feel good, and that is perhaps why I usually remember this period with such love and fondness. Other times, like recently, I remember it with an ache—an empty feeling, a despairing ‘why can’t it still be like that’ feeling.
Nostalgia, as it is wont to do, can surprise us with waves of emotion, placing us momentarily right back where we thought we left—or wanted to leave—behind. Missing someone or something is a lonely place; it is also a place that shows us how meaningful life can be.
She writes, “There are moments where I let a fire move through my pile of memory. Times where I very intentionally get rid of things. Donating bags of clothes and boxes of books. Deleting emails and files I deem no longer important. Putting photos in the trash, analogically and digitally. I let go of what was and I move forward. And it feels fantastic—a lightness of being.
And sometimes, I wake in the middle of the night and feel the heft of loss and it crushes my chest. Sometimes I am less willing to release what is no longer mine. Sometimes I find it unbearable to accept that nothing was ever mine. That love and possession are not the same thing. That memories are possessions—a momentary takeover by The Ghost of All That’s Gone.”
Sometimes it feels invigorating to let the past go, to declare we are “done” with someone, to burn the past in some symbolic gesture of surrender. It’s empowering to feel like we’ve legitimately moved on; to feel at peace with the way things happened, and with where we are now. And, though moving on is a process we like to think we can control entirely, we are still subject to the whims of the memories and emotions entangled with what we are moving on from.
For all the agency we retain, and all the genuine appreciation for our present lives we may have, nothing will excuse us from the pain of remembering sweet memories or longing for what is gone.
Just as we don’t get to control what or who we love, we also don’t get to control what (or who) we have trouble letting go of. We don’t know ahead of time which memories we will cherish and which ones we will desperately miss. We don’t usually know when we’re entering or exiting a period like the summer of 2021 was for me–one that we will look back on as being enormously transformative, or just plain fun. We can’t predict when we’ll have an experience that deeply moves us, in delightful or painful ways. What we can do, however, is be available for the experiences and people that are meant for us, by letting ourselves be open to life.
May we allow our memories and their corresponding emotions to resurface: let them visit, and let them pass. May we learn to hold memories gently, with an open palm.
May we surrender to the letting go process itself.
Maggie