On letting go

It takes a certain skill and commitment to have a certain kind of people in our lives. After about three decades of people coming and going, I must say that age certainly does not make certain things easier. When I say certain things, I really mean life in general. It is not that life gets harder as you get older (some things get easier), it's just that certain things do not get easier. To be fair, they don't necessarily get harder either.

I have had my heart broken in the past by various ex-lovers and ex-friends, and each and every single one of these was no easier than the last. (The only one that I ever wrote about is this one here.) It never gets easier, but hey, at least you can get used to it. And this is where I am now: spent. I am spent on all fronts. I do not know what it is that I could have done differently that would have resulted in a different outcome. Fate can be cruel like that.

I realise that there is a lot of things in this life that I legitimately do not have options in, no matter how badly I want a different outcome. This painful fact is exacerbated by my brain, which likes analysing things to no end, for it keeps on replaying conversations and events and trying to put a various combination of things, while at the same time trying to extract meaning, or I should say, anything meaningful, anything to hang on to. Ah, the futile search for meaning.  The endless merry-go-around of nothingness. The emptiness in the end that makes you wonder, why did I waste so much time on it.

I made the decision a long time ago that I shall cease to be around people who do not make me feel good about life. Life is about growing, changing, rising to new challenges, trying new things and hopefully becoming better persons in the process. I have learned to appreciate those whom I have known for a long, long time, not because of our history, but because of how these people have kept on continuing to somehow make me a better version of my previous self.

Yet lately, this belief I have had for a long time has been challenged because of this:

There is a certain truth in that statement. It is very possible that the person you are yet to meet will have a better intention than anyone you've known all your life. This possibility exists, no matter how remote. And if we are lucky, well, we get to meet this person, and our lives will change for ever for the better, like this. I called it serendipity. But for all I know, it might have been a part of some elaborate plan that I could not comprehend. And that doesn't matter, really. Because what matters is that it happened, and it changed me in a way that I think makes me a better version of myself.

It has taken me a very long time to understand this, but perhaps most people we met are not meant to stay in our lives forever. No matter how intense a love we felt for some of these people (and this love is not restricted to that of the romantic kind), no matter how strong we felt our bonds were, they can be easily snapped by something that we thought we could withstand. Or in other words, what felt so strong and enduring is actually very brittle. Or in other words, I was wrong.

When it comes to human relationships, or human beings in general, I am forever at the mercy of my own limited understanding, so much so that I have given up trying to understand it altogether, and instead just accept that people are like that, and that would be my explanation for the otherwise unfathomable (to me). Someone else might have a different explanation, which I do not have to necessarily agree with - and that is fine, insofar as they do not insist on me sharing this same understanding. And no, let's not talk about what happens when they insist.

There are some stories that I thought I would never write, for the one that I had drafted was a much, much better version. The version that I wanted to eventuate to reality for no other reason than, well, it was a meant-to-be. In this version, if it so happened that we had to say good bye, then it would be because of something that neither of us can control, like a terminal illness or something equally terrible. In this version, there was nothing voluntary about letting each other go.

I have come to eventually accept that the version that I might eventually end up writing, the real life version, is one that could not be more painful. I have come to accept that if we were to continue our story from this day forward, that story would be very different than the one we used to have. But you remain one of the very few people that I liked at first sight. It was easy to feel this way because you were (and still are) very attractive physically. It was a bonus, of course, that you are smarter than me. So in short, my superficial side won and I fell hard, and you were worth falling for. In a lot of ways I used to feel that my prayers had been answered: oh dear God, please let the people around me be good looking. Because wefies.

And for what is now seemingly a brief moment in time, there was warmth. This warmth that once nourished my soul would eventually be reduced to a memory, and overtime, be reduced to nothing. They said that we never truly lost the things that matter. Whether there is truth or not in this statement is something that I would rather not explore. But I can't help wondering if, for reasons I am yet to fathom, we had lost each other long before you said good bye.