Let It Unravel

Some things are meant to break. We spend our lives kneeling before what is already ruined, hands bloodied from piecing together the sharp edges of something that will never be whole again. There is a cruelty in this, a self-inflicted wound we refuse to stop pressing into. We tell ourselves that if we just try harder, if we just hold on, we can force what is dying to keep living. But ruin has its own inevitability. Some things will decay no matter how desperately we try to preserve them. Let them. Let them fall apart. Let them rot.

We have been taught that loss is synonymous with failure, that to watch something slip through our fingers is a mark of weakness. But what if the bravest thing is not in the holding, but in the release? What if strength is found not in keeping something alive past its time, but in letting it go when it begs to be set free? There is a kind of violence in clinging, in forcing what is already collapsing to bear the weight of our refusal. We must learn to stop grieving the inevitable before it even arrives.

Let them misunderstand you. Let them twist your name in their mouths like something foreign, something unrecognizable. There will always be those who need to shape you into a version they can make sense of, who will shave away your edges and smooth you into something easier to swallow. You do not have to shrink to fit inside the confines of someone else’s perception. You do not have to explain yourself to those who have already decided who you are. Their judgments are not an indictment of your character, but a reflection of their own limitations. Do not waste your breath trying to rewrite a story they have already set in stone. Let them believe what they want. Let them turn away. Their absence will not break you.

And then, there is the fear of emptiness, the hollow ache of the unknown. We cling to what is breaking not because it still serves us, but because we cannot bear the thought of what remains after it is gone. What now? we ask, as if the void left behind will swallow us whole. But the truth is, emptiness is not the enemy. Emptiness is space. It is potential. It is the clearing where something new will grow. The universe does not take without giving. It does not strip us bare without offering, in return, something softer, something truer. The hands that once held what is now gone are free to hold something else—something better, something real.

We suffer because we resist the natural order of things. We try to keep our hands tight around what is already slipping away, convinced that if we just try harder, we can stop the inevitable. But we were never meant to live like this, tethered to the ghosts of what once was. The past is a weight we were never meant to carry forever. We must learn to trust in the unraveling.

What if we stopped mourning what was never meant to last? What if we stopped fearing the collapse and instead saw it as an invitation? A beginning disguised as an ending? What if we stopped seeing loss as punishment and instead as proof that life is still moving, still turning, still carving a path forward even when we are too afraid to follow?

The best is not behind you. The best is not in the hands you have already let go of, in the love that has already left, in the dreams that have already withered. The best is ahead, waiting for you to stop gripping the bones of something long dead. There is still joy to be had, love to be found, purpose to be uncovered. But you must be willing to make space for it.

So ask yourself—What am I holding onto that is holding me back? And when you find the answer, let it rot. Something better is already on its way.