On letting go

It is one thing to leave home. It is quite another to leave people.

There for all of us are important people, so supportive and instrumental in shaping the course of your life. I am lucky. I can count myself among the few who’ve been continuously surrounded by truly wonderful people. It is this fortune that brings, without surprise, a great paradox to my life now.

To be successful in life one must absorb and become the sum of those around them. Yet to move on and explore new horizons and new challenges, with great risk of course, one must leave these people in an entirely too intangible past. One must leave the support behind, with only good wishes and fond farewells as a backstop.

Leaving is a strange thing. In some ways it is like being an attendee at your own wake. The most important people in your life speak of you as if you are already past. Your best friends explain your worth and your past lovers put words to the very feelings you wondered existed in the first place. It is an out of body experience that you experience still in your own body. It is an uneasy boost to the self-esteem that you never asked for.

I am now moving on and it is bittersweet. Time may tell whether I am blessed for having such brilliant support behind me, or if rather I am a fool for leaving it in the first place. I hope the former is true. And if not, I hope there is a place for this fool to return to. This is the trouble with letting go.