Pain isn’t proof you chose wrong, sometimes it’s evidence you chose yourself.

I have a hard time letting go.

Even when I know something isn’t meant for me, I cling to the version of my life where it did. My mind can list every logical reason to walk away, but my heart still drags its feet, convinced that loss is a sign of failure rather than evolution. There’s a particular anguish in knowing that something is right while feeling, down to the core, that it’s wrong.

I’ve let go of people I loved, jobs I wanted, and futures I crafted carefully in my head. And each time, I didn’t just lose the singular thing, I lost the entire world I attached to it. The evenings that never happened, the routines never settled into. The office I never walked into on my first day, outfit chosen, lunch spot already decided. We talk about heartbreak and disappointment like they’re only tied to real events, but often, we’re grieving the futures we imagined yet never lived. It’s the ‘almost’ that gets you.

It’s almost easier to make the decision that will change your life than living with the emotional consequences of making it. The decision itself can feel clean, sharp, empowering. But after, it’s dealing with the silence and the change where familiarity used to be. It’s day after day of feeling the absence, of late nights spent wondering if you misread something, if you were impatient, if you walked away from something rare instead of something wrong. You feel foolish for hurting over something you chose to release. We think pain means we made the wrong decision, but it doesn’t.

Letting go isn’t proof that we didn’t care, and hurting afterwards isn’t evidence that we should have stayed. You can know something isn’t right for you and still feel the sting of leaving it behind. That ache is just indication of how deeply you felt, how much you gave, and how much you believed in what could have been. We don’t grieve things that meant nothing. We grieve the things that mattered, even if they can’t move forward with us.

After a while, you’ll remember why you had to go. You’ll realise that absence isn’t the enemy, but stagnation is. And then, you’ll begin to look to the future. To really look, and encompass all the possibilities that come with it. You’ll realise that your letting go was just making space for something new, something better, something more suited for you.

There are always going to be things we desperately want to hold on to. Our minds can scream at us to let go, but our hearts adamantly refuse. Letting go of this one thing feels like leaving behind a part of your soul. Like if it were to be taken away from you, you would never be whole again. You wonder how you can survive without it. If it’s even possible.

But you forget you did it once before. And you can do it again – not because you don’t feel deeply, but because you do.

Imagine a world where dreams are fulfilled, where passions are chased, and imagination leads…

One thing I admire about the human race is our ability to dream. We’re born dreamers, innovators, creators of worlds we know nothing about. There are no boundaries to what is and isn’t possible. As we grow, we’re instilled with the ‘reality’ of how things are, and the way things should be. Suddenly, walls are built around the things we believe we can do, and that little dreamer gets buried under the rubble. Still there, but kept far away, where they won’t cause trouble.

There’s a lyric in Billy Joels ‘Piano Man’ that hits me every time I hear it.

‘I’m sure I could be a movie star, if I could get out of this place.’

I feel his yearning, his wistfulness, his hopelessness. I ponder on how many people walk around with the pain of their broken dreams in their heart, of wishes unfulfilled, goals never reached. How many people are trapped in the confines of their situations, not seeing a way out, unable to pursue the things they love, but are adamant that they could do so much ‘If only things were different.’

I wonder how many people dismiss their hopes and passions, because they don’t see a world where it’s possible. Because they’ve been let down too many times. And each time, that light inside dims further and further, until it becomes just a distant memory, never to be touched. A secret harboured, of the life that could have been. And a fake resolution they tell themselves over and over to ease the heartache: ‘It just wasn’t meant for me.’

How many people do we pass by every day, not knowing that one person’s dream was to become a painter, one’s to become an actor, another’s to re-define life as we know it.

Where do they go? The essence of these hopes and dreams. Surely, they don’t just dissipate. They must live on within us still, needing only a spark to re-ignite that once burning flame. Just something small, to get the cogs of the imagination turning again, to re-think what is possible, to live outside of the boundaries placed on them.

I like to imagine a world where these dreamers are resurrected, where passions are fulfilled, and where in the same way we’re born dreamers, innovators, creators, we die as ones too.