On Letting Go

For those Who Replay The Memory

I was a new student at King Springs Elementary School when it happened.

My private Montessori school would only go to 3rd grade, forcing me and my other classmates to finish elementary school elsewhere.

One day I was walking from my fourth grade pod to the restroom. I remember wearing something frilly, something denim, and my black boots — no doubt from the old Payless on Atlanta rd.

I walked by a boy who I would later come to know as my friends’ brother. He called my boots cheap or ugly or something and I remember staring at him as I walked by — no words to say.

I remember telling my mom about it and she used that moment to teach me about the clap back. If you know my mom, you know she is queen of clap backs — not in a mean way, but in an honest way. If you ever want to know the truth about something, ask Charity.

She gave me a few lines to say back to him in case it ever happened again.I wasn’t completely confident in them but they were all I had so I tucked them into my pocket for future use.

As I grew, I’d think of that moment all the time. So insignificant. A fifth grader called my boots ugly and I thought about it for years??

I have this other memory of walking past that boy again. He makes another comment about my boots, and I say “At least I have boots!”

Not a strong one, I’ll admit, but it’s what I had.

Now here is where my memory gets fuzzy. I honestly can’t tell you if this other memory is actually real OR if it’s just a scenario I imagined so many times that I convinced myself it was real (look it up, it happens).

What I can tell you, is that I obviously have a really hard time letting go.

I’ve been seeing my therapist for 8 years, and to this day, whenever she tells me to let go, I think, “If I knew how to let go, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

I do have tools and methods to help me let go — I write, journal, pray, meditate, asses, rationalize, read, and go to therapy. I run, I walk, I exercise, and I remind myself that the past cannot be rewritten or fixed — it just is.

And sometimes, those methods help. But some days, none of that shit works.

Letting go requires a complete mindset shift — a mindset shift I don’t think has happened for me just yet.

It’s happening though, I tell myself. It’s coming. It’s on the way. I will be the person who can let go and be free without thinking about that one thing that one person said to me that one time.

And is it just me, or do these memories haunt you at the most random moments? In Starbucks grabbing my white chocolate mocha (with oat milk and 1 shot of espresso) and the next thing I know, I’m knee deep in a memory from 97 trying to figure out what I could have said better in the moment.

And I know I’m not the only one. I know a lot of us do it, we replay that memory over and over in our heads. And if you’re like me, you not only repeat the memory, you’re afraid that maybe, you’re still that same person from that moment.

And this is where my therapist steps in and reminds me that you can only heal the past by making decisions in the present.

You can only choose to do something different than before and hope that decision moves you closer to the you you’d like to be.

There are days I forget to use my tools and there are days I don’t recover from the black hole of the memory. There are days I don’t give myself grace for who I was or what I did or how I felt.
And on those days, I’m tempted to revert back to an old version of myself. I’m tempted to hide or lash out at those I love.

Those are the days my better self, and the years of therapy work we’ve done together, reminds me that I am not that girl anymore and I don’t have to make the same fight or flight decisions.
I can choose differently. I can live in my flow.

It’s taking years to get there but I’m working on it — and I get closer and closer everyday.

And as I write, I wonder, if letting go is actually more about acceptance than release.

Because maybe, what we really need to do, is accept that the past is the past and the present is our only opportunity to be who we want to be.

The same way I can’t undo 2020, or the genocide in Palestine, or Trump as president, or the falcons infamous SuperBowl loss to the Patriots — you can’t go back and say what you should have said.

You can only say it now.

You can’t undo the action,

or remember what you forgot,

or answer the call you missed.

You can only be the person you’ve always wanted to be, right now.