There are numerous articles from several renowned sources on the power of letting go, how to let go, whether should you even let go, etc. I have no professional competence that allows me to publish something on this topic. So I am here to share my very personal experience, hoping it might inspire or help at least one of you.
I have had my fair share of hurtful experiences in my life so far, may it be from people, situations, or simple life circumstances. I have also let some of it affect me for a lot longer than I should have — I had trouble letting go.
Now, I don’t think one can fully let go of something very meaningful to them. In my experience, there will always be a situation in life that triggers something within you, causing you to experience the same kind of hurt all over. Once again you are reminded of that one person or that unpleasant situation that you thought you had let go of a long time ago. Does this mean that you haven’t truly healed from it? Does it mean that you haven’t processed it as well as you should have? I don’t have concrete answers to these questions, but I can tell you what I have learned over these past years. I am going to tell you about three specific experiences where I learned a lot about “letting go”.
When I was 18, I truly and deeply loved someone. It could be described as the classic “puppy love” and it was very much one-sided. But to me, it felt very very real and I still cannot nonchalantly brush that experience off as just “puppy love”. Anyways, I did not get my “fairy tale ending” — things didn’t really work out, and I ended up living through two very painful years where I was heartbroken. But I did heal from it, and I learned from it and moved on. Several years later, the “object of my affection” from the past came back into my life and here I was again — all over infatuated with him and to my surprise, the impact he had on me was still massive. I was suddenly questioning myself. Did I really heal from the hurt? Did I learn anything from it at all? Well, things crashed and burned again between us, several times over the years. But I can proudly say, I wasn’t heartbroken and didn’t spend two years each time “getting over it”. I was disappointed each time, yes, but I also got over it faster each time. So I guess, I did learn something from it. However, there are moments when the memories come back out of nowhere, accompanied by the hurt I felt and before I know it, I am crying my eyes out. But each time, I understand myself a little better and I can forgive myself a little more for walking into a similar situation with him several times. Now I am at a stage in life where I don’t actively keep in touch with him. But when I get a text from him, I can reply to it from a place of peace. It took me a few years to learn how to let go of him and the effects he had on me in the past, but nonetheless, I learned to let go.
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A couple of years later, after this incident, I met a girl, who I connected with on a level that surprised both of us. She was rather introverted and purposely gave off the image of a “cold bitch” just to keep people at a distance. But we hit it off so much so, that she even told me I was like “a little sister that she never had”. That friendship meant a lot to me for almost three years until she decided that she was not going to respond to my texts and calls. In modern terms, she ghosted me. I haven’t heard from her since and that was over two years ago. Again, I was heartbroken and disappointed, but it didn’t take me two years to get over it like it did the last time I was truly heartbroken. She must have had her reasons to go off the grid like that, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. But this time, it was easier to process the experience, learn from it and move on. I do think about her sometimes and it still hurts a little when I see pictures of us together, but I am not instantly in tears each time I think about her.
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My third and final example is the most recent one. During my master’s degree, I finally landed an internship that was the closest thing to my “dream job”. I finally got my foot into the aviation industry and I was sure that I am going to spend the next decade or so building my career there. I have wanted to become a pilot since I was a little girl. I am still to date fascinated by aeroplanes and there are very few things in life, that make me happier than flying. So you can imagine the disappointment I felt when I was informed that there was a major hiring freeze right around the time when I graduated and COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO. I was forced to leave my “dream job” and look around for a position outside of the aviation industry. Once again, I was truly heartbroken. But the time it took me to brush it off and move on was rather quick. I often think back to that time very fondly. I am happy I got to experience it, rather than be disappointed that I didn’t get to stay.
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So, from my very personal experience, I do believe that there are things that you cannot fully let go of. These experiences and hurt had a huge influence on who I am today. I still encounter situations where I am taken right back to these memories and some days it hurts as if it had just occurred yesterday. However, I also believe that I have learned how to process such experiences better and focus more on learning from them than wallowing in them. I also realised that in a way, letting go is an act of self-love, as you are consciously choosing to make peace with a disappointing situation, actively learning from the experience and thus, allowing yourself to grow and move on stronger. In short, the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was right:
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
So my message to you, dear readers, is this — each time you feel like you are taking two steps forward and five steps backwards, when something you thought you had let go a long time ago, comes back to haunt you, you have to remember that this is just an illusion. You are learning from it every single time. It prepares you to handle the disappointments better that life throws at you, much better each time. We are only human, so the hurt is likely to come back, sometimes with much more intensity than we’d expect. But you will get through it and come out on the other side a little more stronger, wiser and most of the time with a lot more self-love.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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