Learning to Subsist
Life after letting go is not loss, just mere existence in a new practice.
There is something so beautiful about letting go. It took me twenty years to even accept the concept let alone acknowledge my self-practice of it, but now it is the only thing that consumes my mind. Letting something go is letting something be. To exist in the highest functionality and stability, something must have an entire presence and attention; any existence will not be sustainable if it is something you hold onto, but it must be something you are holding hands with. No one expects you to never make a mistake or love in the worst way, and no one is criticizing you for going down the wrong path or for being consumed by the obsession in your life. Letting go is something that we human beings need to learn. You can learn to love, drive a car, pay bills, grieve, and grow. Who says you cannot learn to let go? As if this concept is not one of the fundamental processes of life.
It was so hard for me to believe that letting go is not just loss. To embrace letting go is a journey I am still on, but one thing I have observed is that letting go is acknowledging that you are not the only existing substance in the world. There is a whole planet circling in space and time, there are so many individuals and so many aspects of life that are functioning around you. Letting go has helped me learn to coexist. I can acknowledge and abide by the ideals that I am not the only one in my life but I am indeed the only one in control of how I live it. Yes, I make mistakes, almost daily, but those mishaps and dysfunctions are not the driving forces of my life anymore. Know that controlling everything is not an option but that you can only control yourself.
Loss is never fun. I will never know what it is like to be you but I know that you are not crazy, unlovable, or a burden, but you are human, you think, feel, and act on your own behalf, for that is only human nature. What I can do is tell you what it is like to be me and maybe I can give anyone just a slight peace of mind or a new perspective. I thought I was crazy for a little bit for it has always been so hard for me to accept change, feelings of failure, loss, and grief, but these are all a part of life. How can you experience the real highs of life and the paramount of happiness unless you know its true value? You can only appreciate value if you have knowledge of comparison. Good is not good unless bad had also been experienced. Know that a good or bad thing happened and learn how to practice life with that new knowledge.
Growing up.
I am an only child, and as a young girl, I kept to myself but I never embodied the idea of being lonely. My environment and education gave me space and resources to flourish, and cultivate my imagination and passions. Three years ago I would have said I was lucky, but I have cognized that I continue to be lucky, no past tense is needed for that observation. Younger me would have doubted that statement for I had begun to grow up, I experienced the realness of our world, and my life became less sheltered. Suffering is something we shelter from children to the best of our abilities for we never want our children to experience casualty. Growing up is bound to happen and abiding by the difficulties of life can be so crucial, having an open mind and open heart is the hardest part. Nobody tells you to be loving of change and loss because it is quite the opposite of how you feel when something you don't like happens, but accepting will set your own consciousness at ease. As a teenager, I struggled with control and it led to most often constant denial. I always searched for a solution, a reason, or an answer. For me, there was always a workaround or avoidance. Eventually, the time came and my first real challenge of letting go was the loss of life.
At the age of sixteen, I learned that there was no real way to manipulate death. You cannot give someone back their life. I had to choose to stay in denial or to accept that there was no reality of possibly getting him back, my palpable relationship was gone. Only the greatest power of time and practice taught me to not dwell but to direct that corporeal love to other aspects of my life. For the next four years of my life, I deliberately focused on the practice of redirecting energy. When I feel as though I am losing a sense of love or purpose I evaluate and consider where my life may be lacking attention. It is easy to become consumed and obsessive over something you fear you will never get back, but if you take just the smallest step towards appreciating what you still have it makes life a lot easier. When I realized that I had no control over changing the circumstances of losing someone, I decided there were other ways to control my life. For me, that meant finding productive and intentional ways to appreciate the life I was still living. I began to be more present in my current relationships, with my parents, old friends, and new people I met throughout the next four years of my life.
Now understand that I let go of the fact that I could not change my circumstances, I did not forget for you can not forget any loss of love like that, it is part of who you are now, but you can learn the wisdom of existing with loss. It is not up to the situation of the world to be fair or justifiable, it is up to you to be fair to yourself. How are you going to now exist in the world, where will this new opening of energy and passion be directed?
Practice
As cliche as I may sound, the self only grows when there is any room provided. This was the first time I accepted letting go as not a loss but as an opportunity to metamorphose my own practice of life. For the first time, I understood what it was like to live as someone who has mourned death. Despite the plethora of letting go that I have experienced in the last four years, I am no less, I have not lost value because of my suffering and grief, I have transformed my love and appreciation for life itself.
Perceiving letting go as loss implies that there is this event of giving up or defeat and that moment needs to be forgotten. When I can promise you that spending energy on forgetting is a waste of time whether you are searching in attempts to forget your first love or first disaster. You can put this as simple as the concept of time, why dwell on attempting to change something that already happened? Time spent overcoming something will happen a lot faster for you than biding over the fact that you feel as though you lost something and there is no chance of returning to any state of mind you had before.
Maybe my ability to say this with such confidence is because of my luck in love. I have been lucky enough to have fallen in love and been loved at the same time, and I have full certainty the longevity of that relationship still flourishes. The feelings of being in complete love and infatuation with another have been some of my most euphoric memories. Maybe because I did not just experience loving someone else but I learned to love myself. I am here to tell you that I can let that person go and yet not have lost anything that he taught me. And if you asked me two years ago, eighteen-year-old me would have told you that she could never fall in love, but give it a year and I would have told you I was never going to let go of that feeling of being in love. I had never planned on letting him go. Alas, holding on was a draining detour that I could only go down so far before I realized that I had already learned, loved, and taught so much. I was not letting go of a person I was scared of losing, I was scared I was letting go of all of the great things that happened during those two years. The fact of the matter is, you can not forget all of those experiences, they are engraved in who you are as a person now, they don't control you but they contribute to your character and perception. I have to practice how to exist in the world as the person I have spent two years curating and forming.
When I first moved to Los Angeles I was intimidated by the culture and lifestyles of the people around me. I was so concerned that I was not going to enjoy myself, or that the attempts to enjoy my new chapter of life were somehow going to lead to me losing myself in the process. I hated change, I hated sleepovers, and I hated sharing. I was so concerned that I was losing the perfect life and the familiarity of my home that I was not going to recover when I moved out. I had no idea what it was like to live alone, or with other young adults, I knew close to nothing about LA, and I felt threatened by the fact that I simply could not control any and all of those things. I had to let go of my obsession with change and accept that this was a new perspective and aspect of life for me. While I still don’t love change, not sleeping in my own bed, and I may be a little better at sharing. I managed to incorporate so much of my energy into practicing these better habits when I moved out. My parents still exist and love me, my life is not as different as I thought it would be, and I am now finally starting to admit that I love my new chapters of life in LA. I direct my energy towards the things I did have control over and I grew to enjoy my new circumstances almost as much as the last.
There is no shame in letting yourself exist and endure the life that you live. It is your life, no one is going to live your life better than you can. No one is going to be able to experience the things that you have, therefor holding on to something just to prove it to another individual is no use. Let go of what needs to be let go, so you can carry the lessons learned but never the weight of loss. I encourage myself and others my age to live for themselves. I find myself worrying so much about being a selfish person. However, I have learned that am completely capable of finding where I fit into my own life and surroundings without disregarding the way I care about others. Adapting the way you live and love is so crucial to the developing moments of young adulthood, that I can only hope you don’t take it for granted. Be mindful of who you are and how you decide to continue your own life after you feel as though you have lost something so crucial to your own identity. Your loss or hardships are not what defines you as a person. The way you build upon yourself and your experiences are how you should present yourself to the world.
