I Was Never Taught How To Let Go

My heart is a graveyard.

My heart has the ability to hold, and home far more people than I think is healthy. In my twenty years of life, I’ve held on to every friendship and romantic relationship I’ve ever experienced. It has consumed me to a point where I feel that I am nothing more than just an accumulation of all the people I have lost and loved. All the friends and lovers I’ve lost I keep close to me.

I think of my heart as a tree. The roots of lost love grow deep in me. I still can’t seem to cut away the dead leaves and branches. It has got to a point where I feel as though grief has become my natural state of being. I mourn people from years back. I delete numbers. I unfollow on Instagram. They don’t call or text anymore. Yet, they still appear in my dreams. My brain feels too big for my body. I cannot seem to erase memories, no matter how much it makes my heart ache. It is a catacomb. Each floor houses a different person’s memories and remains. I’ve prayed about it to God endlessly. I don’t think He even wants to return my calls anymore. I wish I could be more than this. I wish I knew how to forget. Forgive, yes, but forgetting is something I don’t think I’ll ever master.

My heart has become a graveyard, and every night, I walk down the dark path. I lay flowers down on the beds, even for the people who have hurt me. I have etched every gravestone with their full names. I never want it to slip away from me. Every syllable on my tongue. In Heaven, one day, I’ll give God your name, and I hope He’ll lead me back to you. Maybe in another life, it will work out, so I store the memories in my soul. This way, I will recognise you in every lifetime because your laugh will be the same. I will never forget the sound of it. Sometimes, I sit on the soil of your grave and try to talk to you. But you never reply. Or even care to listen. I try to tell you how much I care. That I remembered your birthday, even though I may not have wished you. I say that you’re more than welcome to come back to life. My heart is your home, and there is an empty seat at the dinner table. Your food is getting cold. I prepared it just the way you like.

I try not to be this way. I have tried to let go. I have watched YouTube videos. I have talked to my therapist about it. I just can’t seem to change this part of me. I know it’s not normal. I see how people have let me go and erased me. I have been kicked out of many hearts. I have knocked on doors for hours, begging to be allowed back in. I have sat out on your stoep through the night. I have felt the bone-chilling cold of loneliness. I used to put my head in your lap; now, I sit by your front door with my head in my hands. I peer through your window and watch you eat dinner. The chair I once sat on has been filled with someone else’s body.

I have tried to lay the memories to rest. I have begged God to wash me clean of you. I sometimes want to dig up your grave so that I can hold you one last time. I plunge my hands into the soil and feel the cold earth that houses you. I want to rip this world apart. I want to know how to let you go.

I wonder if my graveyard will be so vast by the time I die, filled with every body I have ever lost and loved, it will stretch from one side of the universe all the way to the other. My heart is expansive. My home is empty. When I die, I think I will walk through the graveyard one last time. I will lie down on the cold soil next to your gravestone. I will close my eyes. I will pray that my last thoughts be of your laugh so that when I reach Heaven, God may point the way back to you.