Letting Go

There are so many things in life that you can’t fight for, like love, peace, happiness. At various points I’ve tried to fight for them all, with a greedy desperation, thinking that they all must come to me at some point if I just tried hard enough. But all I ended up doing was driving them away. In reality, in that fight, you eventually end up fighting against what it is you’re trying to gain, because in fighting it can do nothing but take a negative turn. It’s not just the friendly fire, but also the stress and pressure of the fight. Fighting can only ever do but one thing: destroy.

I’d realised this lesson before, but I kept repeating the mistake through my dark hours, when everything kept feeling like it was falling apart. I was so desperate for something to go right for once, for something to cling on to, but it all kept slipping through my fingers, pulling away from me. So many people running scared, so many pitfalls that I didn’t see in my distraction. It was only when I was on the verge of losing everything that I understood what I needed to do: let go.

It’s like that film, The NeverEnding Story. Everything is breaking, almost everything is gone, but just at that point when all has collapsed, the boy stands up and lets go of his own pain in order to save them all. That’s the point where I am at now, except the only person I need to save is myself. Unfortunately I can’t wish for a luck dragon, nor can I wish myself a better world, but I can wish to be a stronger and better person, thereby making it a reality by working towards it. I have a choice to move on from all the trauma and mistakes from my past, and I can only do that by letting it all go, accepting it, instead of fighting it.

Luckily not everything is gone. I have somewhere to live, I have a few good friends who haven’t yet run away screaming. I owe it to them as much as myself to finally become the person I am meant to be, rather than just the damaged product of my past. I think I am finally learning to live.