What Letting Go Actually Looked Like
Letting go wasn’t closure—it was clarity, arriving quietly, and choosing myself without spectacle.
An Art of Drinking Water reflection · 5 minute read
The relationship didn’t end all at once.
It frayed.
Conversations shortened.
Laughter arrived late, if at all.
Silence started doing more of the talking.
I kept trying to fix it—not because I didn’t see the cracks, but because I believed love meant effort. Staying. Explaining one more time. Being patient enough to turn loss into understanding.
I told myself this was commitment.
But my body was telling a different story.
It tightened before interactions.
Exhaled when I was alone.
Began to feel relief in places where grief should have been.
That confused me.
We’re taught that heartbreak should hurt constantly. That moving on means forgetting. That choosing yourself is selfish when someone else is still hoping.
None of that turned out to be true.
Letting go didn’t look like closure.
It didn’t arrive with certainty or clean edges.
It looked like clarity sneaking in sideways.
The realization that love shouldn’t require self-abandonment.
That being chosen shouldn’t feel like negotiation.
That peace is not a consolation prize.
I grieved—not just the person, but the version of myself that tried so hard to make it work. The future I kept revising. The hope I kept resuscitating.
And then something unexpected happened.
The quiet felt better than the tension.
Not happier—
but truer.
Moving on wasn’t about erasing the relationship.
It was about honoring what my body already knew.
That I functioned better without constant repair.
That I laughed more freely when I wasn’t bracing.
That I slept deeper when I wasn’t anticipating disappointment.
Water doesn’t cling to containers that crack it.
It moves toward what can hold it without harm.
Learning what was good for me meant unlearning the idea that love must be difficult to be real. That loyalty requires endurance. That leaving is failure.
Some relationships end not because they lacked love—but because they lacked safety, reciprocity, or room to grow.
Walking away didn’t make me cold.
It made me available—to myself, to honesty, to a future that didn’t require constant compromise of my nervous system.
Now, when I think about what was lost, I don’t only feel sadness.
I feel gratitude.
For what taught me.
For what ended before it hardened me.
For what made space for something gentler.
This is what moving on looks like now:
Choosing alignment over attachment.
Choosing calm over chaos.
Choosing what nourishes me, even when it disappoints someone else.
Not because the relationship didn’t matter.
But because I do.
And learning that—
slowly, carefully, without spectacle—
has been one of the most loving acts of my life.