I don't know how to let go

If I could talk to my past self, I’d tell her to stop holding on so tightly

Wednesday, 17 September 2025

12:36 pm

If I could talk to my past self, I’d tell her to stop holding on so tightly.

Everything I’ve ever loved is bruised from my grip. My feral hands claw at ghosts.

I never let go.

I have to be pried away,

finger by stubborn finger.

One thing I know how to do is want. I yearn.

At the time, I wanted it so badly. And then, like clockwork, like always, something better would come along. And like clockwork, like always, I’d say to myself: imagine if I’d got what I wanted so badly back then. I wouldn’t be here now, doing this amazing thing, or I wouldn’t have met that person.

And I feel relief. I laugh at my past self. She was so naive, so short-sighted.

She laser-focused on a specific career goal or a relationship or a place and it would always slip through her grasp, leaving her gasping.

Always, always, always, I look back at everything I never got and I thank God, or divine timing, for ripping away the things that weren’t meant for me.

I was never good at knowing what was good for me. Bad for me, yes. Every time. I’m infamously good at bad decisions. I used to enjoy them. A masochist, revelling in the chaos. But every single time, I somehow escaped the wreckage by the skin of my teeth.

It felt like divine intervention. The hand of God yanking me by the collar and dragging me back to the start. A clock rewound to zero.

And I’ve always been grateful for whatever divine mechanics were at play. Like some gyroscope, measuring when I’m off course, correcting my path.

So why am I talking about the past and yearning and what was or wasn’t meant for me?
Because I thought I’d be a little closer to that feeling by now. When I chose to break things off in my last relationship, I was reaching in the dark for my future self, following the echoes of her whispering: everything you’ve ever left behind has always been a blessing. Something better is waiting.

But four months have passed and she never came to get me.