Can you let go?

Has it been raining break ups or what? Suddenly in the last few months so many of my friends have ‘broken up’ that I seem to have heard about all sorts of reasons for break ups and seen all sorts of ways people deal with them. For a person with limited actual experience, I think its great I got to hear of these things, I atleast know what not to do now. So one of those usual coffee discussions about the big R word and my friend says, ‘So you don’t believe that there are people who cant let go of their love?’

Honestly, I think we can do whatever we want, if we put our mind to it. So yes, we can let go of love too. But with the numerous second hand break up experiences and my limited experiences, this is what I have learnt of people who don’t let go. Prime reasons are as follows.

1. Fear : What if I don’t get anyone else, what if its not the same as this? Frankly these are tricks your mind is playing on you. There are 6 billion people in this world, surely you can get someone else.
2. My pain is my badge of honor : You wear your pain on your sleeve. You tell the world how much you have suffered and how despite all that you are still surviving. You don’t let go coz it satisfies this need of yours to tell others that you have gone through shit and still you are surviving bravely (?). Now unless you can write poems like Ghalib (a famous Urdu poet) out of that hurt or you can build a Taj Mahal out of that pain, its not worth holding on.
3. Guilt trap : For some others it is a matter of revenge and reverse control. They want to make the other person feel bad about what they did. So they act all hurt and hold on to that hurt and bitterness all their life. Even if they get someone else who is actually better they wont allow themselves to be loved, because then they would lose that righteous anger of theirs. Most of us also know of some friend or the other who was used as a pawn by one of their split parents to guilt trap the other person.
4. My love is the purest : I happen to know some of these people. They don’t let go coz they think that they are the ones who are responsible to prove it to the world that true love still exists. You ask them why are they torturing themselves, they tell you how can they let go of true love? They are proving just to themselves that their love is pure and divine. By no means am I saying that true, honest love doesn’t exist. Thing is you don’t have to prove its existence. And if you have to prove it to someone, seriously are they worth your time?

And all of these people are uncomfortable with their status. You can forever hear them saying that they want to move on, that they want to get out of it or that they want to let that person stop affecting them, but honestly they don’t want to do any of it. They want to hold on for all the above mentioned reasons. So to all of them, people decide what you really want and then just stick to it and more importantly, take responsibility for what you decided. If you want to keep crying, then realise that you made that choice. If you want to get out of it, decide that and don’t look back. In the end, life works itself out.