Your Sentimentality Is Keeping You Stuck

There might be something you’re not quite ready to move on from yet because you’re unwilling to face the grief of acceptance—acceptance that you might never be able to revisit a past version of you.

Letting go is made especially difficult when there’s a sentimentality attached to what you’re trying to let go of. The narrative that surrounds this person or circumstance might be keeping you trapped in a wading pool of dissatisfaction. The longer you stay in it, the less you’re able to actually fit. Your knees peek out from the top of the shallow water because only half of your limbs are actually submerged. You don’t fit in this space anymore, but the nostalgia of summer afternoons during your youth when the cicadas buzzed incessantly and you were free of responsibilities encourages you to stay where you no longer belong.

The unfortunate truth of life is that no matter where you are and how comfortable you feel there, at a certain point you’ll begin to change. As you change, the environment around you inevitably changes as well. What was once full of potential no longer offers you the same hopefulness your past self might have indulged in. The shift into a state of discomfort is undeniable, but you continue to deny it as a way to hold on to an unfulfilled promise of the past. There might be something you’re not quite ready to move on from yet because you’re unwilling to face the grief of acceptance—acceptance that not everything can be satisfied and that you might never be able to revisit a past version of you.

Letting go of something or someone is also, simultaneously, a process of letting yourself go. This can trigger an innate fear of abandonment—abandonment of a younger, more naive and dependent version of yourself. That version of you still feels unsafe and uncertain, constantly looking to you for proof of their validity in your life. To move on or let go of experiences that once felt good and provided comfort can make you feel disconnected from this past version of you, subsequently forcing you to question who you even are if you’re no longer them. Where do you belong now that you no longer fit in the wading pool?