Thought Catalog: Why we Hold on Tightest to the Things that Aren't Meant For Us

"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."

--Brianna West