Letting go

 

I didn’t know but letting go of someone I’ve never met is the hardest thing to do on this dratted planet. I’ve let go of ghosts, friends, demons, good habits, bad habits. I’ve let go of memories, dead people, distant people. I’ve let go of parts of me which I thought were innate, but ultimately were inane. I almost added an ‘s’ in there. Of all the toughest decisions I’ve had to make over the years, this has got to be the most difficult one. Letting go of someone I have never met.

I had an ideal, once, and once only, and it was taken away from me. She was all I didn’t know I needed, and she had stepped into my night like a dream. The day I met her was daily nondescript. No buildup to this day, no chance of me thinking I’d meet my ideal person. So when I did, Death was amused, and after a time adorned it with tubes and a ventilator, and tied its life to a thin green line drawing mountains and abysses at irregular intervals. That erratic horizon of a line had to settle between those two, where the ocean meets them, and became as still as the doldrums.

Now we’re drowned among 8 billion individuals. We’re even specked into oblivion by billions upon billions of stars and galaxies we cannot possibly ever explore. Yet when I look at her, her uniqueness shines brighter than quasars, weighs more heavily on my mind than black holes on the fabric of the universe, appears more majestic and terrible than neutron stars. This is what I feel when I think of her.

Ultimately, our lives may not matter and our decisions only affect a fraction of whatever we call the reality around us. Yet I will not get to meet her; and surely Death wouldn’t be amused again because that is not how Death works, yet it feels right all the same. Yet I cannot shake this feeling that I have that it could be she, again, even if it’s not how Life works. I didn’t know but now I do, that letting go of someone I’ve never met is the hardest thing to do on this dratted planet.