“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”

– Havelock Ellis

Suddenly the spell has been broken, and the boy that had filled your thoughts with love and heartache joins the club of distant memories. It is a liberating feeling to watch the love you believed in slowly start to loosen its grip and dissolve into the ocean. The illusions and expectation and hopes and dreams untangle and become yours again. Finally, you are able to see things as they are, not how you want them to be. 

I took my heart up to the mountains to teach it strength. I perched on a sandstone cliff over my city and watched how the fog wrapped itself in between the hills. My mind has felt like this city lately, shrouded in the deep fog of loving and letting go. I have a tendency to leave my door open for longer than I should with the hope of love prevailing with a sudden stroke of clarity on my partner’s heart that draws them back to me. However, the time finally struck to reach out and pull the door closed.

Sometimes it is weeks, sometimes it is months that allows me to see things clearly. I love with ferocity and patience. My heart is all in, wherever it is. Nothing impresses me more than an open heart dancing on the precipice of love with unwavering strength as life passes through. My greatest gift and greatest weakness is my ability to function through the knowledge that all of the love that is available to us is already here. Partners become human manifestations of this knowledge and I accept them as they are.

It is uncommon to walk through the world with vulnerability. To carry my heart in my hands, beating and breathing life into the lives I come in contact with. I do not hide anything, for I know my own mystery and that there will never be a point where anyone knows all of me. I trust in the goodness of others, deeply, and in turn have been loved deeply. However, I have yet to meet a man that can meet me here.

I’ve been watching the fog slip away from my mind as the clarity of my last love settles in. I had given my heart to a man whose heart was stuck somewhere in the future and past. He was a living enigma, acting and reacting from places I could never learn with such conviction that it took me a while to see what was actually going on. 

We lived different realities. 

I found the challenge of slowing down for this person exciting, while my version of slowing down was still a full speed ahead for him. I took my time getting to know him, each day opening up new layers of compassion for the human in my hands. I existed in a cycle of incredible highs followed by incredible lows and then forgiveness again and again. I trusted that we would find common ground between us, but I was simply walking over onto his ground. I had forgotten how to stand my own.

After love leaves, we are often full of thoughts about “what if” and “what could I have done differently.” It takes an incredible amount of strength to walk away from a love that does not feel ready, but it is vital for us to do this. There is a reason for the separation, even if you do not understand it, and learning this reason takes time to solidify in our hearts. Some men are power trippers and leave for the feeling of pain followed by the need to be forgiven and welcomed back. When you encounter these type of men, walk away. Let them leave, change on their own time, and if its in the stars, find their way back. 

Learning to dissociate the love we need from the love we accept is a part of the learning game. When we accept love that does not resonate with the love we deserve, our hearts begin to crumble. When our hearts crumble, the mountains we believed in do too. Our love is a ribbon of mountains. A line of decisions that make the impossible possible. Love is the beginning and the end of everything. When we devote our lives to love, we remove the space for hate. Our worlds become a living example of what it means to be a human on this earth.

I am no longer looking for love. I am being love. I am interacting with the world in the name of love knowing that all of the love that I will ever need is already surrounding me, and that each pin drop of my actions trickles out into everything else. Closing one door opens the rest of them.