Letting Go

“Let it go. Let go of all this. Move forward now”.

It’s easier said than done.

It’s those complex memories that remain, seemingly omnipresent, at the fore of your brain. You know the ones: it takes a minute detail to trigger their presence, like a catalyst, and suddenly you’re there, in it, all over again, consumed by flashbacks. ‘What if’ thoughts cascade through you like rushing water. All the things you could have done differently, all the things you failed to say, rise to the surface and take up their unwelcome residence. Your shortcomings are enmeshed within that moment, and are eternally and inescapably preserved. It perfectly captures all that’s wrong with you. Naivety. Ignorance. Weakness.

All you need is the voice of morality. Of reason. The one sound that anchors you immediately to the earth beneath your feet. In a spiralling world, it’s the one sound that’s constant, and its comforting warmth envelopes you in a way nothing else can. It brings you back to the present, to the current moment, and communicates in its mere intonation and timbre that no, you aren’t alone. It has a metaphysical quality to it: how could something so transformative truly exist within the realm of my world? You begin to understand that someone is here with you, and the realisation of that mere fact soothes you. The shaking stops. Breath, only moments prior forcibly expelled from your vessel, seems to gain free entry again. It’s because she’s here. She delivers a soliloquy, a loaded tirade of truth and wisdom, directed to you, her daughter.

“I can’t believe this is happening again”, she lets out, frustrated by her inability to calm her daughter’s mind, much like when she was a child. It was easier then. A child’s brain is frighteningly intelligent, yet perhaps the most intelligent element of it is its inability to feel everything. The onslaught of emotional waves and burdens that adults are forced to contend with. It ripens with age, and the weight of the world only gets heavier and heavier as life throws its curveballs. Sometimes, she longs for the days her daughter was her baby.

“But, see, and please listen to me, you’re letting this, him, control you. You’re filled with this pool of self-hatred and its drowning you. It feels like I can hear you scream, if only internally, deep-rooted in your mind! But I hear you. No one on this earth can hear that voice like I can. It radiates out of your eyes. And I am the one person that knows how to navigate those eyes.

“You have to let it go. Let go of all this. Move forward. I know the sheer impossibility of that statement engulfs you whole, I know that. But you must listen to me. You are a good person. You’ve done something brave. The cost of bravery isn’t lost, not even to the best of us. But this mental torture you’re putting yourself through is stopping you from living. And what a waste that is. It was me that watched you as a child, and I held you in my arms and pondered the wealth of opportunities that would come your way.

“And they’re not all going to be good. Because the patchwork of life is just that, a patchwork. It’s a blend of the good and the bad. In fact, it’s those bad moments that enable us to look at the good right in the eye, directly, full of soul and vitality, and enjoy them.

“It takes losing yourself to find yourself. It takes experiencing the worst of life to live through the best of it. It takes losing the will to live to enable you to live spectacularly. But now, now you live.”

And that’s when my mother triggered something different within me. Not the atypical re-run of my worst moments. It was an epiphany. An epiphany that only a mother can reveal.

I had to let it go. Hasten those traumatic moments, and take stock of what’s around me. The people that offer me a smile when I walk down the street. The way the air hits my face and fills my lungs. Watching my mother pottering around the garden, ordering someone to bring her the trowel. Observing the love grow between my grandparents, fifty years and a brain haemorrhage later. She was right: it’s imperative to sacrifice the things that tear us apart inside. Only then do we have the room to take in those moments that make us marvel. She knows she was right; she always does.

The beauty of time is that it slowly fades those once-sharp memories into a hazy recollection. The poignancy of bitter emotion softens, the deep-seated resentment turns to a lulling rarity, and the complete despair turns into the tale we tell the next generation. Another generation of mothers, and their daughters.