Navel-gazing and learning how to throw things away

Old keys won’t open new doors. Trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried jamming the tip and the biting into the keyhole, bending the blade to try and force it to fit. If I could, I would’ve taken a torch to the whole thing, melting the key and lock down until they slotted snugly into each other. But what does it become at that point? When you succumb to the desperation to try and fit something that once was but no longer is back into your life, all you will reap from the concerted effort is pain and misery. All it does is heighten the grief you fought so hard to overcome, and all you’re left with is a broken key and a locked door. There is nothing of value to you behind that door. Not anymore. 

Letting go is hard. It’s never pleasant, and it never seems to get easier. Sometimes letting go isn’t just the release of a person or place you once loved but also the surrendering of the person you were during that period of your life. Shedding that version of you, it is never a quick, painless death. It’s always drawn out, a knife slowly slashing across your throat, Russian roulette with only your finger on the trigger. It’s a past variant of you haunting yourself,  a reminder of everything that could have been but now isn’t. Sometimes, in your new stages of life, you become the ghost that haunts. Who you are now can’t help but peer into the back door of memories, your sweaty psalm pressed up against the window, an excluded shadow yearning for the nostalgia of everything you once were, everyone you once loved. 

It is commonplace to find a home in somebody, to make a living and a morning routine in someone else. Its comfort is not permanent, though. It is only a safe haven for the time being. The house that you build in someone else is sometimes made of straw. With one strike of a match, this home you thought was forever is now burning. You will smell the acridity of the smoke on the insides of your nostrils for the next couple of years, a reminder that some people are just a temporary resident, at best. It’s a reminder of the truth that you can never leave home because home is inside yourself. 

Home is in you. It’s in between your teeth, on the tips of your hair, under your fingernails, in the divots of your collarbone. They ride the swell of your hips, sit in the back of your knees, resting on the soles of your feet. Home is your favorite color and the song that never fails to make you dance. Home is your eyes adjusting to the sunlight on a Sunday morning and the elasticity in your limbs after yoga. You can never leave home. 

When you think of leaving someone who you have made a home out of,  it’s a little like dying, a little like being reborn. It’s not always something you remember, but you always know that there was bloodshed. If you go back to the person who you once thought was home, you will soon realize that home is not home anymore. That’s when it’ll hurt the most. As long as you stay away from the home you let go of, you will always have fond memories of what once was a safe space for you. It is not for the person you are today. Stay here, now, so at least you can always have the peace of mind of thinking one day, you will go home. 

Letting go is always succeeded by the hostility of meeting someone new. It’s a brutal attack on your heart and soul to imagine someone new in your life when you least want it. Why must I keep going through the same routine? The same phrases and grand revelations I have about my childhood and my friends and my writing roll off my tongue so often that they leave a bitter taste in the back of my throat. I am cautious about revealing my insecurities, slowly peeling back layers of vulnerability. I have said all these things before, I have done all these things already. They are sitting in minds of people I no longer have access to, bits of my life floating in the back of their heads, them only remembering at the most insignificant of moments. I have lost track of how many people know my favorite color, my bedtime, what makes me laugh, what makes me cry. I do not want to think about how many more people will learn these useless facts about myself, reducing myself into boxes until my being is summed up by figures of speech.

I can not bear to let anyone else go. Or worse yet, to be let go against my will. The next person I meet,  we will simply have to sit in silence and learn everything from and about each other in some other way. Do not be fooled; the human gaze is a powerful thing. When I look at you, however briefly, I have decided to fill my entire existence with your presence. If only for a few moments, I have filled my whole world with you. A potent, seemingly indistinguishable act. I wish letting go was as easy as looking away. 

Throw away your old keys.