Letting go..

You’re in love with a guy. The 'head over heels' kind of love. You can’t get enough of that person. It’s not the right relationship. Everyone can see it. They’ve all warned you about it. But you’re too blind to notice anything. You just want to be around that person. You’ve forgotten your life prior to meeting that person. Your friends don’t exist anymore. They’ve become annoying because they’re warning you to stay away from him. Then one day that relationship comes to an end. You feel like your world has just come crumbling down.

What do you do?

You cry. Then you cry some more. You’re shattered and you spend quite a bit of time feeling miserable. Then you have moments where you feel, fuck this; I am going to take control of my life. May or may not last very long. Depends. You've questioned yourself enough. Now you’re looking for answers and everywhere you turn; movies, magazines, books, friends, they are all telling you that you need to let go. 

But how exactly do you let go? Is there a set procedure you follow? A technique to be learnt? In my quest to 'let go' here are some of the things I tried.

1.     1. Cut all contact.

In my moment of strength I deleted the number from my phone. Deleted all texts. All e-mails. Cut away all photographs. I didn’t want anything to do with the guy. In my moment of weakness I was checking him out on Facebook. Obviously cutting all contact wasn't working.

2.     2. Cry till you can’t cry anymore.

I called in sick at work. Stayed at home and just cried. Cried my heart out. Not for a week but a month. It wasn’t helping. As if that wasn’t enough I started receiving notices of overdue bill payments. Now I wasn’t even allowed that luxury of crying anymore.

3.     3. Eat

Being an emotional eater this came very easily to me. Since I was home all the time I reached out to food for comfort. Ordering in pizza and coke was effortless. Now I’m wondering why I didn’t demand a loyalty discount. Of course, just ended up putting on more weight.

4.     4. Shop

Like this was going to work? I had put on so much weight that I didn’t fit into anything I tried. It was making me even more depressed. I still shopped for useless things. As if the overdue bill notices weren't enough I now had run up a huge credit card debt.

5.     5. Exercise

The shopping excursions made me realise I had to do something. I decided to get a gym membership and get in shape. By this time I was feeling a little better as I had not seen or heard from him. The whole “out of sight is out of mind” thing was starting to work for me. I joined the gym and became a regular for a couple months. Then I bumped into common friends and got an update about him. 

Fuck! I knew I should’ve pretended I didn’t see them and walked away. But I secretly wanted to know what was happening. That was the last of my exercise.

6.     6. A new relationship

I tried. It didn’t work out. I did realise though that I had developed “trust and commitment issues” and couldn’t really be myself anymore. Even I wouldn't have wanted to date me.

By this time I had exhausted all options available and knew nothing was working. I knew I had to let go. But how? How can you just let go? If it can be learnt, I'm a quick learner. Why is nothing working for me?

Falling in love is quite like skydiving (Yes, I seem to be obsessed with skydiving). You just jump and trust that your parachute will function like it is meant to. In my case, it didn’t. In case of skydiving you don’t really get a second chance if the parachute fails. I felt just like that. 

How could I let go off all those memories, both, good and bad that were etched on my heart?

There was no answer and I just settled to live each day hoping things would sort out.

After almost 5 years I was once again going through the events in my mind trying to figure out a way of just letting go. I had done this so many times, it was like watching a movie on mute and completing all the dialogues yourself. It had been a really long time. I was now frustrated at my own ability to come to terms with reality.

This time, the penny dropped! I realised I was so busy blaming the guy. So busy expecting him to apologise. So busy treating myself as the victim that I didn’t realise I had a big part to play in my own heartbreak. I knew deep within right from the start that he wasn’t a good guy. I still took my chance.

The minute I took responsibility for that, it became very easy to forgive him. Can't explain the feeling. Almost like a huge burden was lifted. I actually physically felt lighter. Happier. Content.

So a bad employment reference, a huge credit card debt, a closet full of useless shit, a 10 kilo gain, a few missed relationships and 5 years later I had finally LET GO…!

The lesson here is what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another. You have to keep exploring and when you’re absolutely ready the answer will appear. I've just added another option for you to try. But when you try some of the above-mentioned remedies, don’t say I didn’t warn you of their disadvantages… J