One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows this year, Sterling Point, comes during a scene in which the show's central couple prepares to part ways, before they have to return to their respective homes. “I think we have to let this hurt. Okay?”
I binge-watched the entire first season the week I got back from New York City, following a month spent at a program surrounded by people who had gone from strangers to some of my favorite people. The quote echoed something I'd articulated just days earlier. During our final hours together, I broke a prolonged silence in a room full of friends to say, “I think there’s something really beautiful in the possibility that none of us will ever speak again.” My comment was met with some rather extreme reactions, but it's a sentiment I've continued to stand by, even months later. In many ways, it was the first time I'd given myself permission to believe in an idea I'd spent so long resisting. The significance of a relationship does not have to be measured by its permanence.
I understood why my comment was met with such a reaction. In a way, there's a me somewhere that would have reacted the same. But something about the month I'd just spent there had softened the sentiment, allowing me to see something rather beautiful in what might otherwise have sounded bleak. I think it's part of the human condition to fear endings. We're instinctively inclined to resist death and mortality, to assign continuity to the things that make up our lives, our relationships, experiences, even moments. Endings hurt because they feel like stops. Like a cutoff, like a bridge that simply gives way in the middle of a river. But I've come to realize that some of the most captivating, beautiful things are endings. When I think about it, I can't recall a conclusion that didn't hurt, that didn't tug at me, that didn't leave me feeling somewhat unfinished. Standing in a narrow dorm-floor hallway, you and six other people laughing and crying uncontrollably, hilariously, the end aches. A cascading hug into the arms of someone who once felt more permanent than anything else, in dancing room, the end stings. Lying curled up on a quiet night, a familiar paw finding its way beside you, the end burns.
Navigating this in wholeness during its characteristic senior year constancy makes these thoughts a daily conception. The hardest endings are the ones you foresee, something set in predetermined time. Senior year has a way of forcing me to take inventory, to consider what and who I'll carry with me and what will inevitably be left behind. But perhaps less so for me than for others. I've found myself doing some version of this every few months for as long as I can remember, rather than arriving at this realization only now. But for the first time, my relationship with that prospect feels different. I don't feel particularly deprived of anything, nor do I find myself searching for ways to recover what has already passed. Nothing that's ended feels as though it needs to be resurrected. Something I've noticed about myself, for as long as I've maintained a consciousness, is that I'm almost perpetually grieving. Grief isn't a singularity so much as a condition. I'd consider myself a grieving person, albeit in the least morbid sense of the word. I think grief exists in companionship with longing. There's a peculiarity in missing things within reach. Same as there's a peculiarity in reaching for things that don't miss you.
“Don't touch things.”
I continually force this on myself on countless frequencies. The pinching temptation in reaching for what’s familiar, what feels missing, mistakes the comfort of recognition for sense of belonging. I first learned the word closure in seventh grade and the idea that endings were supposed to be complete. That notion lodged itself somewhere in my mind, shaping the way I thought about leaving things behind. I know when something should be left alone, when it has reached a point of stillness and no longer needs interference. And yet, there is a tendency to keep pushing, to force movement for the sake of movement itself. I think moving on and letting go are two separate things, but oftentimes can be mistaken for the other.
I hold a belief that seems to contradict nearly everything else I believe in, though it has remained remarkably steadfast. It's a rather simple one: that everything happens for a reason, that what is meant for you will, in some way, find its way to you. That’s why I believe that when something ends, that’s because it needed to, because it pulls us forward into where we’re meant to be. But how can you ever be certain that something has reached its end? What if, in deciding to let it go, you're walking away from something that might have otherwise found its way back to you? The answer is that people aren't always ours, nor are relationships or moments. There's a certain mutuality to the things we consider our own; their continued existence in our lives depends, in part, on the willingness of others to remain. Choosing to continue something doesn't guarantee that it will choose the same. Perhaps that's what makes certain endings so blindsiding.
And sometimes, the only agency we have is in knowing when to withdraw.
There’s things that have ended without my control, without my input, without my opinion. But this year contained the inaugural moment I allowed for something to finish, something that felt immovable to me. Having autonomy over our endings provides us control in things that feel like losses. It’s an inevitability for me to be someone so acutely aware of time. But time and the “greatness” of a moment aren’t linearly related. As trivial as it may come across, the best things don’t always last the longest. IMPERMENANCE is the state of not lasting forever. My most perfect moments have been endings, but only in times I don’t anticipate the soreness it’ll bring. I'm captivated by the physical feeling of an ending. The stillness in the air, the sudden expansiveness of an otherwise familiar space, the almost instinctive grip we take on the present when we sense it slipping into the past. There's a clarity that comes with these moments, as though everything around you has momentarily quieted.
I think that’s what it means to let something hurt. To embrace conclusions, to welcome closings, and to find beauty in the things that were never promised permanence.
Svefn-g-englar by Sigur Rós
