I used to wonder how you let go of the things that are killing you, when it feels like it would kill you to let go. How you decide between “if things are meant to be, they will be” and “if you want it, you have to go get it.”

I think we hold on tightest to the things that aren’t meant for us because at some level, we know they aren’t really ours. We’re always seeking the love we know we don’t have. We’re always trying to prove the things that are not entirely self-evident.

We know that when we stop thinking and talking and racking through the details again and again, it will really be over. When all that exists is an idea, holding on is the only way to keep it.

Because letting go has little to do with giving somebody permission to leave our lives, or declare that they don’t love us anymore, or walk away for good, and everything to do with accepting that they already have.

I don’t know about fate. But I do know the things that are ours don’t require us to mentally and emotionally latch onto them to remain. That the best things are never forced, are never created out of ultimatum, never leave us reeling and questioning them for months or years at a time.

I do know that you cannot prove how much you love by how much you’re pained over loss. That you do not prove your character by how well you can convince other people you’re doing the right thing.

And I do know that it’s never the love that hurts you, it’s the attachment to the idea of what it’s supposed to be and how long it’s supposed to be it for. I do know that we will never be able to find real love unless we learn to detach from what it should be. I do know that we’re never going to find true happiness until we do the same. I do know that nothing here lasts, and the idea that it does is an illusion — we eventually lose everything, every last thing we have and are and own.

So the point isn’t what we lose, but what we had in the first place. We aren’t meant to attain things like bullet points on a resume, we’re supposed to go through them and let them go through us.

Some love teaches us what it has to teach us in a month. Some a lifetime. Neither is more important than the other.

The things that are meant for us are the things that force us to stop seeking an external light, but to start becoming it. The things that are meant for us are trying and joyous and beautiful and excruciating. They’re the things we don’t think about.

The things we don’t have to hold on tightly to make happen.