It’s been 5 years now.. And being someone who really looks to logic for answers, for explanations.. I’m as perplexed as ever. No, I’m not looking for the same love or reconciliation, I simply wake up some days feeling as if a part of me got taken away. And perhaps it’s that “stolen part” that I have a tough time letting go of. I am not so much sad as I am unsettled, although quite devoid of emotion when I think on these lines... What is it that I want? Maybe I saw all these relationships around me falling apart and I never prepared myself for the possibility that it could happen to me too— yes, they call it teenage love, puppy love, naive and all that. But ask yourself this question: When was the last time you truly loved someone with no other thought in your head? No thought that was past oriented or future-anxious; with no reservations or insecurities about what it has in store for you; with zero cost-benefit analysis !!
Having pondered on these thoughts is why even though I have grown into a woman with the ability to love with all my heart today, at 21, I think the purest form of love is expressed in the immature, unaware years. I’m not belittling love at any other stage though.. This is just another one of the revelations I’ve had in my experience of growth so far. So yes,in the middle of all this learning and confusion, one particular question really nags me:
Do we really ever ‘let go’? Or do we just powder up the voided parts of our flesh and bone? Becoming ‘more ourselves’ as we perceive, yes, but losing out on a lot of what we really are?
I knew of this person forever since he lived in the same neighborhood as mine, but I came to know him 6 years ago. There was the entry and then cue: the exit. Like a one-year long but short-lived film: departure to a foreign land. It’s a really long story, a really draining story and what happened between the hello and the goodbye is absurd, because if I ever look back- I can’t really see the ‘goodbye’. All I see is a blurred series of events and now i’m here, sitting at my desk and writing about it, almost as if it was just yesterday. What I do remember vividly is having earned a friendship, in all it’s idiosyncrasies, a very strong bond. A mutual obsession of sorts, but a good obsession.. The kind that, at that age, one would imagine to be interminable.
Well skipping to the present again, I realize that everyday that I wake up does not make his presence, the fact that he touched my life any less obvious. If anything, it’s like a nostalgic trap which if I dare indulge in, makes this reality even more apparent to me. And once again, i’m empty because I have no answer as to why this happens. Especially when it manifests in the form of dreams. I no longer consciously (or subconsciously, i’d like to say) dedicate any thought to him yet he exists in the realm of my dreams which therefore proves me wrong when I state that I have “let go”. And no, this is not romantically nostalgic, it is rather dreadfully frustrating because my mind has grown to hate the concept of this modern day gibberish break-up-let-go-and-erase-from-your-mind lingo. Because, hello ! if it still crosses your mind even in it’s minutest form- it exists and it’s not gone.
So in utter desperation for an answer... This is some food for thought:
How can we say we’ve let go and forgotten when neither does this ‘letting go’ alter the reality of their existence, outside our minds or in it ?
Read my question again, It’s rhetoric in a way but I’ll still answer in accordance to my opinion: You never truly lose, let go, forget or stop knowing anything that you have ever loved. You’re woven eternally in each other’s memories once you cross paths.