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How To Let Them Go
By Chelsea Fagan
First, accept that you haven’t let them go yet. Don’t allow yourself to believe your speeches to your friends, or your empty promises to yourself about how they don’t matter anymore. Accept that you still think of them, accept that wine makes your heart tight with thoughts of them, accept that there’s a letter you’ve started to them at least a dozen times, even if only in your mind.
Accept that they’re still here.
You know the one — the one who popped into your head the second you read this, the one who’s been occupying that same little place in the back of your mind for as long as you can remember. It’s the person you think of every so often like a punch to the gut, the one you allow yourself to remember in little painful bursts which make you wince. Maybe they’re still in your life, still on your phone, still the profile you type in late at night after a few glasses of wine and look at just a little too long. Maybe their number hasn’t been in your phone for months, but it doesn’t have to be, because you still remember it by heart. Maybe they aren’t there at all, no one you can touch or laugh with or even yell at with all the things you wish you’d said. Maybe they’re totally gone, but you still can’t let them go.
Remember that it’s not up to you, though. Remember that you can only control your half of the equation…
