Letting Go

    

"Your shadows will always fall behind you if you choose to face the sun." - Shannon L. Alder, Never or Forever

   Letting go; one of those feelings that comes as shock and a loss, a stumbling backwards into the unknown with the disappearance of an irreplaceable being or substance that was so present in one's life. Without a doubt, letting go gracefully is one of the hardest lessons to learn, because neither time nor practice can acclimate a person to the sudden loss of letting go and the necessity to accept it. Letting go is a skill that must be learned and put to use as throughout life situations continually have cause for “stumbling into the unknown”. Whether or not the unknown is better or worse than current situations is a mystery--and that is why letting go is so difficult—there's no guarantee of improved conditions. Letting go doesn't come with a warranty that all the over thinking has been worth it and things will be all right.

     Letting go does not forget the past, it does not write it off into a book of memories left to be unopened for fear of crushing nostalgia. It does not return for a second thought as the completion of letting go is a one time action. It does not consult with your feelings, rather with reason as you assess the best thing in life. It does not forgive you, and does not often provide closure. Letting go slams the door of the past in your face and pushes you down to find your way back up on your own. Letting go is a one way conversation with no responses to answer to, only conclusions to draw on your own. Letting go is sudden and determined, impatient to ease out of a time when things were bleaker and more hopeless. Letting go takes no prisoners, leaves behind only that aftertaste of what was and what could have been. Letting go leaves a world of what if's and conditional arguments within oneself. The fear that accompanies loneliness encompasses the vulnerability of turning off the lights on a previous walk of life.

     Letting go is a clean slate, a blank canvas, a new dawn. It provides a new perspective and a resilient future full of unknowns and possibilities. Letting go frees you from being tied down and afraid. Letting go is the calm after the storm and the rainbow after the rain. It is discovering your wings, finding out that you knew how to fly all along but were just too afraid. It's looking your fears in the face and charging with a rampant intrepidity, releasing the nagging voice in the back of your mind whispering your inadequacies and harnessing the voice of hope that tells you that you don't need the bondage you were in. It's realizing you exist apart from another person, another thing, another idea. It's walking out of a situation and using your intuition and faith to show you where to go.

      Taking a stumble into the dark is terrifying and haunting, the feelings of defeat and valor mix together in a muddy puddle as you collect the remaining pieces of yourself and begin to put them back together. Letting go is looking up from the pit you're in, and deciding that enough is enough. You look around, pick up a rope, and climb. And in that moment when you're fighting for something bigger than your circumstances or emotions, you are victorious and courageous and free. It is believing in something other than the fear you let control your life for too long. Take a step into the unknown, wander through the desert, stumble in the dark, soar across the radiant skies, breathe in the air you live on, and let go.