Writing It Down

Day one hundred and twenty-three, Georgia. Letting go. How does one do that, exactly? Let go of what — the person, the feeling, the memory of someone you loved? What am I holding on to?

Some days the same thoughts go round the same track for hours.

What helps is writing them down.

Letting go has a lot to do with what I believe, or believed I knew, about a situation or a person. What I have been treating as true can turn out to sit badly next to something I have just found out.

It is possible I have been telling myself a story for a long time, and ignoring whatever wouldn't fit in it. I wanted the world arranged in a way I liked, and I paid for the arrangement by not looking at certain corners of it.

At some point the pressure gets too high and there is no way left but to look.

So I write the facts down first, without interpreting any of them, and then check whether what I think about the matter is true. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I find that I have been handed half a truth, carefully turned.

Letting go turns out to be a clerical task.