I have always found it very difficult to let go. Let go of grief, of anger, of people or things I have loved.

Right now, for example, I’m still seething because an idiot neighbour, who has a very aggressive dog, was threatening to let him loose while me and my boyfriend were walking our dogs and we were only some steps away from our doorstep. I am furious at the man, and I am furious at my boyfriend too, because he didn’t do anything, he couldn’t even control a small dog.

However, complaining about this is not the point. The point is the fact that this happened more than an hour ago and I’m still really angry. I suppose this anger stems from many different things. I was scared for my dogs, I cannot understand why people have to act like that, menacing someone for fun, why I am so angry and still I feel so defenseless. And that is how I feel everyday, everytime I go out in this country, and I guess one of the reasons why I feel so happy that I don’t have to leave my home.

And I try, I try to breather deeply, I try to relax, but I cannot let go of that feeling and I know that it will only go away when I go to bed and that tomorrow I will feel better but I will not want to take my dogs out for walks because there’s an imbecile roaming around.

And this is a very immediate example, but right now I have a greater example haunting me. As I said in a previous post, I have been asked to move, and so I have been trying to find a place. One of my cousins works for a real estate agent, and found me a really great apartment. It’s great, yes, but very expensive.

So when I saw it I told my boyfriend about it, and jokingly asked him whether he’d like to share it. And it was a joke, he also laughed. But now it seems we are moving together.

Naturally, this has awoken a lot of feelings, in both of us. We are nervous, scared, and we have been talking about how we might solve problems that will surely occur.

But I am feeling other things as well. I think I am afraid I’m going to lose my freedom, having lived alone for so long. I am scared of sharing my space, my intimacy, my silence. And I’m also scared of what this move entails.

My current home was, for me, a space where I could heal many things from my past, where I dwelt in my sadness in silence, where I made myself whole again.

But now, I am scared that I am walking farther away from a past that I always found so hard to leave behind. I feel that with every step I take I am more distant from places and people I still love.

I am very well aware that many times, when we look at the past, we see only the beautiful moments, the happiness, the peace. And I don’t know, perhaps for our own survival, we (consciously or unconsciously) choose not to remember the difficult times, the words or actions that broke our hearts.

Perhaps this is why I find it so damn difficult to let go, to feel that I have the right to fly in a different direction, that the past is over, that I chose to close a door where there was never anything for me and that it is useless to keep staring at it when there is so much in front of me.

I guess the most painful thoughts of all are all the times I have imagined the things that could have been but never were. The dead possibilities, the dreams that were never born. And the wondering, if I could have done anything better, or differently. How many mistakes I made that, if undone, would render that other present true.

I suppose life is the history of paths that we walked, and the paths that we chose to ignore, the paths we saw when it was too late, the paths we abandoned knowing that it would kill our hearts to do so, knowing all the while it was going to hurt, but also knowing there was no other way.

Life is learning to live with our decisions. And so I will have to live with mine.