Letting go

Have you ever ripped your diary apart and lit fire on the papers? Watch the flames eat away the letters and leave the words turn into nothing. No trace of the feelings you poured into writing, no evidence of the tears you cried into the sheets. It is quite fascinating. We all have skeletons in our closet. Some need to be taken out and buried, before anyone came to know of it and rattle them. Some facts and feeling in life need to be destroyed. Broken beyond repair. Or burnt to ashes for that matter.

I have had my share of butterflies-in-tummies, anxious days and nights because of that-one person, roller-coaster-type exhilaration, aching hearts, on-the-spur-of-the-moments regretful decisions and every kind of of instances you can think of that happens to a person in "the-idea-of" love. I can only look back and smile at those because none of them came true. I can talk to my girls about them and reminisce. The feelings are long gone and forgotten. The tiny hearts I drew, the love songs I wrote, the imaginary conversation I scripted, the quotations I collected, the daily encounters I poured out to my loyal friend, my diary - those all had to go. I could not look back nor could I have anyone to see them. So they had to burn. 

My mom says I am like my granny in not being able to let go. She means stuffs. I like to collect this and that; even small things matter. Every year, when there is a thorough cleaning up of my room, I get to encounter things I have saved up so lovingly in this nook and that corner. Mom wants me to get rid of them. I always dissent. This year though, I agreed to let go of a lot of my past collections. There was not much attachment left in me anyways. It was not just about cluttering my room and leaving the place messy but about having a clear head on what I want for my future and what I can afford to stay belonged to. I have them in my memories, I do not have to have them in print.

Some stuffs I threw away and one I burnt. Trust me, I am not the burn, bitch, burn type of a person at all. Somehow, I wanted to get over the dent in my conscience. And the next thing I knew, I carried the notebook, went out and burned it. The whole process was intriguing. The flames moved fast and relentlessly. They ate the paper and ink, and with it my holding-on-to-the-past. I know it's more like there was fire because I let go, but looking at it, it felt like there was fire so I was able to really feel that I had let go. 

In the end all that remained was a charred bits of paper bearing no trace of half-a-life-time's worth of feelings and memories. But from these black burnt pieces, we get to collect ourselves and make a whole new us. We all deserve to set ourselves free and move on.