love in letting go

“love in letting go” by warren zeiders doesn’t feel like a song to me. it feels like a confession somebody left on the kitchen counter for anyone who’s ever had to walk away while their heart was still reaching.

because the truth is, letting go is not this clean, graceful thing people post about when they’re healed. it’s messy. it’s ugly-crying in the shower. it’s rereading old messages like they’re scripture (and still knowing you can’t go back). it’s missing the way they laughed, and hating the way they made you feel small. it’s loving them and resenting the version of you that kept accepting less than you deserved.

the lyrics hit that place where you admit what you don’t want to admit: sometimes you don’t leave because you stopped loving them—you leave because you finally loved yourself enough to stop bleeding. you leave because you got tired of “almost.” tired of inconsistency dressed up as passion. tired of being the safe place for someone who kept bringing storms.

and what’s brutal is how the memories don’t leave when they do. you can still crave the familiar. you can still reach for them in your sleep. you can still want to call them when something good happens. you can still feel your chest tighten at the thought of them moving on. but you can want them and still know they are not good for you. both can be true. that is the heartbreak nobody warns you about.

letting go is choosing peace over potential. it is choosing reality over the story you kept rewriting in your head. it is finally saying, “i love you, but i will not keep abandoning myself to keep you.” and that is a different kind of love—the grown kind. the honest kind. the kind that stops reopening the wound just to prove you can survive it again.

if you’re in that season—missing someone you had to release—i hope you hear this: you are not weak for still feeling it. you are strong for still choosing yourself anyway. that is love in letting go. raw, shaking, and real.

with ink + bloom, 🌻