My Struggles with Letting Go
For as long as I can remember, I’ve seriously struggled with loss. Loss can mean so much more than a loved one passing away in your life - it can be the absence of a living person from your life, or even grieving the end of an experience. In more ways than one, I’ve always felt loss so deeply.
When I experienced my first death in the family, I couldn’t help but sit in the pews of the Greek Orthodox Church in Lowell and think about how much pain those closest to that person felt. I sat and cried uncontrollably over a family member I did not even know very well… and I always wondered why. Why did I have to feel so deeply? Why was I the one hyperventilating at a funeral over a person I had only made a handful of memories with? Why did I feel so emotional when my childhood best friends and I lost contact, or when I finally graduated and realized adulthood was on the horizon? I’ve always grieved so deeply, and I didn’t always handle it in the best way. When I look back, I’ve always been this person, though. My first real experience with loss came about when I was in elementary school.
My parents decided to finally rip the band-aid off and tell me Santa Claus wasn’t real when I was in 6th grade. To put things into perspective, I was a firm advocate for Mr. Claus and all his elves, even getting into philosophical debates with other classmates about his existence. At one point, I truly believed I had heard the reindeer on our roof and that I had seen Rudolph’s red nose light up through my window shades. One day, I came home after school and noticed a letter on my bed. There was beautiful calligraphy written with red ink and beautiful cut-out engravings on the side (my mom was quite crafty and very much into scrapbooking back in the day). I rushed downstairs to read my letter in front of my mom, where she asked if she could read it to me instead. As each word left her mouth, I felt my heart sink more and more into my chest. Bravely, I sighed while fighting back all the tears I knew were going to come, all because I wanted to feel strong in front of my dad, who was shaving his beard in the connected bathroom as he listened to my mom finish explaining the most devastating news of my entire childhood to me. Afterward, I thanked my mom for reading the letter to me, and I gave my dad a big hug. I told him I was okay with knowing Santa wasn’t real and that my presents weren’t delivered to me via sleigh (lies, of course). My dad chuckled, letting me know he was the one who would eat the cookies my brother and I made for Santa every Christmas Eve, and a part of my heart sank even more. I returned upstairs to my room, where I immediately lay in my bed and started sobbing. My imagination felt fake, as if all my dreams of magical worlds like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter or The North Pole could be real, were ripped from me. After processing the heavy news on my own, I rushed downstairs to my mom and cried in her arms like she knew I would.
Fast forward years later, as a freshman in high school, I knew that Santa Claus wasn’t real, but a part of me always hoped that he just might be, even for my new nephew’s sake. It took me a long time to fully accept that reality and let go of the fact that part of my childhood was gone. I think a part of me just wanted to remain youthful and protect my innocence by not losing a sense of my imagination for as long as I can remember. Plus, it just hurt. I didn’t want to accept the fact that the whimsical worlds in my brain weren’t real.
For years, I was told I was “too emotional” or simply “sensitive” by family members of mine when I would react in situations of loss. Thus, I spent many years pushing the tears away and swallowing the lump in my throat when I knew I was grieving a person or experience deeply. I would suppress all of my emotions by avoiding thoughts that would lead me to acknowledge an experience authentically. Quite honestly, I didn’t like the feeling of letting go (I mean, cmon, who does). After feeling the weight of letting go various times, it became one of my anxieties that I tried to avoid by moving on quickly from situations or not allowing myself to open up to new people because it hurt too much. After years of being consumed in this toxic cycle of avoidance, I finally came to realize that the most important aspects of letting go are both accepting things as they are and acknowledging my feelings to healthily move on. A part of this is definitely a control issue - learning to let the universe take control and telling myself that whatever’s meant to be will be. Let me tell you, though, this is truly hard to accept sometimes. I didn’t wake up one day and master accepting the reality that people and experiences come and go from life. I’m still working through welcoming this reality on various levels, especially when it comes to moving away from home or detaching from someone who still feels like “my person.” Through trial and error (and a great therapist), I’ve been able to navigate situations with a better head on my shoulders by not only accepting what is, but also allowing myself to feel my feelings through it. Yes, I’m an emotional and empathetic person who tends to experience life more deeply, and yes, I partially believed in Santa Claus’ existence until I truly couldn’t fathom it no longer. But that’s okay because that’s just who I am, and this is a part of life that tends to hurt. At the end of the day, life truly sucks when we have to let go of beliefs we held on to or people from our lives, and even now, I’m still learning to navigate these situations and will be for a while; but with each loss, we become stronger and wiser, even if it feels just a bit too hard to handle in the moment.
I hope you give yourself some grace when it comes to accepting the realities that come with letting go. I know I’m trying to, so I hope you do too :) Thank you for reading!
Captured by Author’s Mom.
Image of Author (yep, that’s me!)
