That Piece We Carry With Us

It took a while, but some time after the end of my long term relationship that had lasted over a decade, I finally felt like I’d finally buried the part of myself that had loved, so brazenly, so foolishly, even though I should have known better.

The part of me that I’d put to rest had always been a sixteen year old kid, in love with a girl of the same age. Unlike me, the kid hadn’t aged, so putting him out of his misery was a dreadful affair.

Every morning, I’d wake to be greeted with this overwhelming feeling of dread. I had to do my duty again. Put the boy down. That was the duty, and it broke my heart every morning, killing that part of me that was still hopelessly attached to a woman I would never want to see again, but at the same time, had been in love with for such a long time… until it all came to a close when she decided I wasn’t part of her future. (Even then, I still loved her for a long time after she left.)

After a decade, you’d think that people who love you stick around… but they don’t. Sometimes they even choose to walk away.

But that is neither here nor there. This is a story about the hardest part of letting go. I thought that it was just about killing the boy who loved her, that part of me, but I was wrong. There’s more to this. I also had to kill that part of her that I’d built inside of my head.

You all know this: as you meet people, the most important ones become predictable to a certain degree. You build a profile of those people in your brain, either consciously or unconsciously. You can predict their responses. You can call upon them when you need them, but when they aren’t immediately around.

As you might imagine, I had a mini version of the woman I loved in my brain. And after she walked away, that “voice” became increasingly hostile… the recollection of her advice was too painful to bear.

In retrospect, I not only ended the boy who loved her, but also muted that voice. I suspect that parting ways with folks isn’t just difficult because we miss them, but also because our mental model of those folks degrades over time. Also, sudden memories of a person who really let you down and hurt you, those aren’t nice.

So yes, saying farewell to that piece of them that we carry with us, may be the toughest thing we ever have to do when we cut people from our lives. People we love but lose suddenly, we can, to a certain degree, carry with us forever. Silencing the voices of those who disappoint and betray us… is much harder.

I’m not the same after all of that.

Perhaps for the better.