On Loss and Letting Go
We often find ourselves on a rollercoaster of loss. Some things are taken from us, others we willingly surrender. Yet, amid the chaos, one certainty remains: we seem doomed to experience another lost cause. We try so hard to architect our lives, to build fences against the pain of the past, running from situations that might force us to feel those old wounds again. But in doing so, we become hyperaware of loss. We mistake the ghost of the past for a demon in the present, gripping yesterday so tightly that we can’t see we’re suffocating today.
The irony is tragic. We cling to the past as our only roadmap, hoping it will shield us from future pain. Yet, in our refusal to face the present, we mentally transport ourselves back to the original wound and relive it over and over. We are essentially cutting off our nose to spite our face, inflicting the very pain we seek to avoid, just to feel a semblance of control. In this grand act of escapism, aren't we losing the only moment we actually have?
Why does a loss in the present cut so deep? It is rarely just the loss of a single person, plan, or possibility. It is the slamming of a door on a part of ourselves. Imagine the self as a vast residence, a mansion of many rooms. Every connection we make, every dream we nurture, every path we choose grants us access to a new chamber, a space where a version of us comes to live. To experience loss is to hear those doors slam shut. Sometimes it’s a temporary closure, a draft from a window we might open again. Other times, the door is sealed forever, and the version of us that lived in that room is now, suddenly, homeless.
Yet, vulnerability has a cruel sense of timing. Moments arise when we feel a pull to peek through the keyhole of those sealed doors. In those moments, we might find someone else standing there, sheepishly attempting to uncover the mysteries we have promised ourselves we would never unveil. They are disguised as a new opportunity, a new face, a new chance. We would rather deny these visitors entry to our haunted house, because to let them in would be to scab an unhealed wound, to let the blood we’ve worked so hard to contain spatter across the floor of the present.
And so, the cycle tightens. Why is loss so unbearable that we would rather lock ourselves in the foyer than risk another opened door? Why do we try to control people, plans, and possibilities as if they were sand in a fist? Perhaps it is because we believe that if we grip hard enough, we can prevent another door from slamming. But the tighter we clench, the faster the sand slips through our fingers, leaving us with nothing but the sting of our own nails digging into our palms. An empty hand, and a self-inflicted wound.
When this sense of wounded homelessness kicks in, is there a place in this abode where we can rest? Is it possible to keep the rooms from becoming haunted while we gather ourselves back up? What if those sealed chambers could be transformed, not into crypts, rather into spaces as welcoming as a freshly cleaned hotel room, bright and fragrant, ready to welcome new guests? Instead of standing guard in a frenzy, panicked at the idea of theft, we could simply open the windows and let the light in.
That, perhaps, is what healing is meant to help us with. Early in the journey, the idea of bringing light to the parts of ourselves we don't know how to deal with, the rooms we have let go barren in darkness, feels less like a practical task and more like a piece of abstract philosophy to decode. It is only with time, with patient care and a deep understanding of one's own self, that we learn to inhabit this idea. We learn to exist with compassion in a strange world that was never meant to be fully controlled.
One of the key acquisitions on this journey is the art of letting go of resistance, the need to fight the present or rail against the changes forthcoming in life. Resistance to something being actively lost, or to a thing not working out in our preferred way, does not save it. It never does. But it does guarantee something else: it turns into mental agony. It calcifies into feeling stuck, anxious, ruminating. It traps us in a loop of overthinking, over-analyzing, and over-rationalizing. These are all forms of self-harm, quiet ones that take up residence in the body, rooting us firmly in the past and making the return to the present feel like an impossible journey home.
This resistance can take an even more severe turn when the suffering becomes coupled with the ego's desperate need for validation. When that happens, the suffering is no longer content to stay within; it seeks company. The goal shifts from healing a lost cause to winning a game. To the one holding the pieces, this state can feel like a fun place to be — an illusion of power, a throne built on the rubble of a broken situation. Yet, games are only fun on boards or in sports. In life, where every person we encounter is simply another soul in another body, these games work against the very compassion we could be showing up with. They become a hollow performance of superiority, a distraction from the simple truth that we are all just trying to find our way back to a well-lit room.
Conversely, when a loss becomes tied to one's sense of self-worth, the act of recovery turns into a desperate chase. In the aftermath of a breakup, for instance, this anxious pursuit manifests as excess — excessive giving, excessive emotional nurturing, excessive gifts. It shows up as a need to reopen the closure discussion again and again, depending on which way the emotional tides are pulling. Yet, this situation rarely ends in recovery. More often, it leaves a person looking like a doormat, while their own emotional state is trampled in the rush to prove they are worthy of staying.
These unyielding complexities, these knots we tie ourselves into are best unraveled not by pulling tighter, but by pausing to see where the thread is going. There is a quiet power in simplicity. Being simple in nature and allowing things to remain as they are ensures they lead to their natural outcome. It is better to surrender the outcome after doing all that was truly within one's power.
For what is lost.
For what could have been.
For what is yet to come.
When we accept the lost cause for what it is, when we come to understand that life is merely a series of good phases and bad phases woven together, the view shifts. We stop looking through the microscope at the tiny details of our pain and start seeing from a bird's eye view.
This acceptance means coming to terms with the old version of ourselves, and the old version of others. It means acknowledging how our perception of what could have been colors the reality of what is. It means understanding that the change in dynamics, the shift in individualities, fundamentally alters how things will now be. And perhaps most crucially, it means recognizing that we are not always meant to receive the whole picture at once.
Sometimes, we are sent only a fragment of what we desire — a single room instead of the entire wing, a glimpse instead of full entry. This fragment is not a cruelty or a mistake. It is a test, a quiet measure of whether we are ready for the rest. Can we hold this small piece with gratitude, trusting that what is meant for us will not pass us by? Or will we spend our energy mourning the rooms that remain closed, missing the one that has just been unlocked?
When we finally stop oscillating between the past and the future, we arrive at the purest form of reality: this moment. The rest are just projected realities, illusionary stories that kill the present moment with the complexities of our own thoughts. From this place of quiet, we can look back at what we have lost, and forward to what we have not yet met, with something softer than fear.
We can call it gratitude. We can call it hope. Or we can simply recognize that there is so much still to see, to feel, and to become. And none of it was ever limited to what we could hold in a clenched fist.
I don't know if the journey ends in a well-lit room, with windows open and gratitude in my chest. As I write, I still recall the despair of standing in rubble—when loss takes everything like a tornado devouring even the strongest foundations. The uncertainty that kicks in when one day you wake up to find the front door slammed in your face.
And yet, knowing all this, I cannot say how the journey will unfold when something shatters again. Someone could leave. Something almost understood could turn back to exclaim the big misunderstanding. A door I thought sealed could crack open and reveal more darkness. I don't know if I will remember any of this.
Still, sitting here right now, the fist is unclenching. It's simply because a clenched fist cannot hold anything - not grief, not hope, not another person's hand, not even a new opportunity.
That is all. That is everything. That is nothing.
Hopefully, I too can return to this piece when the time arrives.