I have the tendency of staying with things long after they have already happened.

Definitely not in a productive way. I don’t always sit down to understand what I’m feeling or figure out what the lesson I supposed to learn. Sometimes I’m just there and think about it.

I’ll replay the conversation. Remember something someone said. Then (I find myself doing this a lot) go back to the exact moment when things changed. Imagine what might have happened if I’d done things differently, or if they’d said something differently, or if we’d both somehow known then what we know now. But I guess this is silly cause nobody could see the future.

And if I’m being honest, I let myself get even sadder.

There’s something strangely comforting about doing this. Like when I get too sad and sometimes sobbing, I feel quite relieved and eventually better. But one that made me feel even more strange is that there is a familiarity to the sadness. Once I’m there, I know how to be there; so I stay.

I’ll play there entire painful scenario in my head as if I’m watching a film I’ve already seen, but hoping the ending might somehow change this time — it doesn’t.

But I watch it anyway.

And the strange thing is, the rest of my life can still be completely normal while I’m doing this.

I can wake up the next day, get dressed and go to work; sit at my desk and answer emails, finish whatever needs finishing and complain about something insignificant. I can pack my workout outfit and go to Pilates after work because moving my body makes me feel better, the sweat and heat and somehow the blood that rushed to my cheeks made me feel pretty. I can stop for coffee. Take bunch of selfies and choose one that looks nice to post on Instagram. Reply to messages and make banter. The mundanity; go grocery shopping, make dinner, watch old tv shows.

Nothing has necessarily fallen apart visually. I’m still functioning. I’m still doing all the ordinary things I normally do.

But then, somewhere in between all of that, I remember. And suddenly I’m back there again.

I think that’s what makes these things difficult to explain sometimes. Sadness doesn’t always look like not getting out of bed for days. Sometimes it looks like getting out of bed, going to work, doing your job, laughing at something someone said, then lying in bed that night replaying something painful in your head for the hundredth times. My therapist said once to me that “someone can look put together and whilst still going through it.”

The world doesn’t necessarily stop just because something inside you hurts. Sometimes I just carry on with everything else.

I’ve also been thinking about how easily I can make a feeling bigger by constantly checking on it.

Am I over it yet? Do I still feel sad? Why am I still thinking about this? Does this mean I’m going backwards?

Sometimes I think I’ve spent more time checking whether I’m okay than actually allowing myself to be okay in whatever way I happen to be that day.

Because maybe being okay doesn’t always mean feeling okay. Maybe I can have a perfect ordinary Tuesday and still have something sitting heavily in the back of my mind. Maybe I can laugh with my coworkers at lunch and still think about something sad later. Maybe I can enjoy Pilates and still go home and think about painful past events. Maybe I can take a nice photo and post it on Instagram and still have a completely different story going on in my head.

I should understand that these things don’t cancel each other out.

I think I’ve sometimes treated my emotions as though they need to match the rest of my life. If I’m functioning, then surely I am fine. If I’m still sad, then surely I’m not healed.

We often forget that people are more complicated than that.

You can be sad and still be productive. You can be hurting and still have a good day. You can miss something and still enjoy your coffee. You can think about something painful and then spend ten minutes choosing which photo to post.

I guess life doesn’t wait for you to finish feeling something before it carries on. And perhaps I don’t need to either.

Maybe that’s why the idea of “moving on” has always felt a little strange to me. It makes it sound like there’s a clear point where you’ve processed something enough, learned whatever you were supposed to learn and finally put it away.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever worked that way.

When I found myself visiting the painful moments, I know exactly what happened. I know why it hurt. I know what I could have done differently and what wasn’t mine to carry. I know that there wasn’t any other conversation that could suddenly make sense.

But still, I think went there.

I’ve wondered

“does this mean I haven’t let go properly?”

“Finding closure” 

“Making peace with it”

But maybe sometimes there isn’t anything left to understand.

There are things I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make peace with that I don’t actually need to make peace with right now. Some things are simply painful. Some endings are disappointing. Some people leave bigger space behind that you expected them to.

And sometimes you realise all of this and still have a night where you lie in bed and think about the while thing again.

I’ve started to wonder whether I sometimes confuse processing something with repeatedly visiting it. And this might just be a topic I’m bringing to my next therapy session.

Because I want to understand the difference between sitting with a feeling and picking at it. Between allowing yourself to be sad and deliberately finding the saddest version of the story. I know I’ve done the latter. Ha!

I’ve gone looking for old messages (yep, I’m not one to delete everything to move on) because I knew they would hurt. I’ve replayed moments because I knew exactly which part would make my chest feel heavy. I’ve let myself imagines different ending to each scenario knowing perfectly well there was no going back to rewrite the original.

It’s like picking on a fresh scab of a wound to check if it still hurts — which of course, it does.

This is the part I’ve been trying to understand. Not why I feel sad but why did I keep returning to the sadness after I’ve already felt it.

Is there something about sadness that feels like holding on? But there’s really nothing else to hold on to.

But then if I stop thinking about it, it feels like it didn’t matter as much as I thought it did.. I don’t know.

The thing is, I also know that remembering and living inside these echoes of the past are not the same thing.

I can miss something without revisiting every detail of it or role-playing a different ending to the story.

I can acknowledge that something hurt without trying to make myself hurt in exactly the same way again.

I can let a memory be a memory. Lesson learnt and leave it at that .

This all sounds obvious when I write it down but you know what? It doesn’t always feel obvious when I’m lying in bed at midnight.

There are still nights when my mind wanders somewhere I didn’t ask it to go. I’ll remember something and suddenly I’m back there again, feeling everything as though it happened five minutes ago. And most of the time, I let myself stay for a little while.

But I guess that’s okay too?

Honestly, I don’t want this to become another thing I have to be good at. I don’t want to turn “letting go” into another task on my list of things I should have figured out by now.

I want to be sad without needing to fix the sadness. I want to miss something without needing to do anything about the missing. I want to think about what happened without having to find new interpretation of it each time.

And then I go about my day; make tea, take a shower, change my sheets, read my book, go to work, show up at Pilates. Not because I’ve suddenly healed but ’cause life is still happening.

I really think that’s what being alone has taught me more than anything else. When you are alone, nobody is there to interrupt the thought. Nobody to change the subject.

You get to see just how often your own mind will return to the same place. Sometimes that’s uncomfortable.

But being alone isn’t always about enjoying your own company. Sometimes it’s about learning how to be with yourself when your company isn’t particularly pleasant—when you are sad, overthinking, remembering something you’d rather forget.

And learning that you don’t have to ‘fix’ yourself every time you feel something.

Some things don’t need another conversation.

Some things don’t need another explanation.

Some things don’t need closure in the neat and satisfying way we imagine it.

Sometimes you’ve done what you could. And there really is nothing left to fix.

Perhaps, the next step isn’t figuring out how to make yourself stop feeling it. And instead just letting the feeling be there without giving it the rest of the night—And I’m still learning that part.

— C. Sol