“Like it was nothing. No emotion. Dry and cold. Pitiless and sharp. To the point. It’s over so stop contacting me!” said with no real gusto.

Which is why like a dumb ass, she answered the damned email/phone/door-knock and caught a right hook to the jaw. Yes, the ex got her. She’d been had. Hoodwinked. Pulled down- down into swirling masses of negativity by failure to adhere to the rules she set.

Damn it!

So… let it go.

Damn you…

It isn’t about him, really or so she tells herself in order to gain a few hours of soundless sleep. Screw him. This was about poor choices, not about some head case ex-boyfriend guilty of committing the predictable, cliché ex-boyfriend thing they all tend to do. This was all about her and her inappropriate response to negativity.

So man-up, if manning-up was to be done and she kept screaming at herself, for the life of her, to stop responding to her ex’s taunts! There is a reason ex’s become ex’s. Had it been such a wonderful union, they would still be together. Therefore, letting go is an order.

Five sessions and over $300 of therapy time later, she understood what God and her best cousin had told her for free:

Rejection is God’s protection.

So why was she still holding on? Turns out, it had nothing to do with him.

Quit your whining, get your ass off the therapist’s “charging on a curve but still expensive somehow” chair and let it go because ain’t nothing wrong with you. Everything is fine. You’re just in a fight with this thing called life. We give in to staying down because it seems easier than putting in the work to move on; this is one of the worst kinds of self-inflicted injustices.

Gathering her wits about herself, she collected every dusty photo and lovely trinket gifted by her once beloved-can-do-no-wrong lover and sealed them in a single cardboard box. She then set them curbside with other baubles now rendered useless, and left them for Friday morning garbage pick-up.

She’d come too far to give up now- to break down, to throw in the towel, to lose the fight. Right? No turning back. And when thoughts of love so faux begin to creep in, she also considers how thinking the wrong way can create lies. Embracing a semblance of strength to stay in the fight is a must. Sure, she knows that while tomorrow can bring fresh new waves of pain, it can also bring a delightful sense of knowing that change is inevitable but beautiful when we don’t fight against the tide.

While time heals nothing, it’s what we do in that time that does heal. Nothing stays the same- not people, not dreams, not love and certainly not life. If we, however, flow with and never against the grain, no matter how human nature tempts us to do so, we can learn to let go when necessary. Then we can embrace the Gatekeeper’s nod and discover that the bitter tang of life will find the palate of our tongues only temporarily- as nothing is permanent. We only need see God’s rainbow as a promise of that.

Everyday, even as graying clouds encroach, the spumescent, sweet tastes of life can envelop our body’s like the energy-filled arms of God Himself. Letting go is magical: like fresh air and fresh love all in one beautiful, rose-scented breath.

Letting go… yes there is beauty living there.

…and I have faith in that.

Who will like her if she cries?

The rādere falling of tears

Only emotions borne of children given permission to shed

Without judgment

Should her tears fall, they slip as stymied ice

And shatter glass-like upon impact

So throw back her shoulders

Square off and then on the square

Take it like a man

And tears that fall in secret shall

Cascade somnific pains of diamonds instead

Or should she sleep around

As men will do?

A healing process that seemingly works for them

Fight them

Fight the kaleidoscoping view of weakness

That no one respects a sore loser

Nobody buys the swan song

~poetry by Somniay Bascomb~