The Key to Love Is Letting Go

It was time. As time seeped through and around me, I knew it was time. Time to let go. I’ve noticed that letting go is a common theme through life. Trees let go of their leaves in to the sweet autumn air. Mother birds let go of their babies from the warm security of the nest as they venture into the unknown. Humans let go of their tears, letting them fall to the ground like rain drops. The broken hearted let go of their loved ones, hiding those tears with a plastic smile. Now it was time for me, Everly Jones, to let go of my loved one.

It has been almost two weeks since the night my young life ended at the hands of a drunk driver as his car met mine in a tragic embrace. But though it’s been awhile since my last breath, I could not let go of Carter so quickly. The other spirits pleaded with me to join them in the world after this one. They told me of how lovely it was there but all I wanted was to feel how lovely life was here with Carter. It hurt to see him those days after life had escaped me. I watched him cry, knowing that if I could have tears I would cry with him just because of the pain shattered across that beautiful face. I stood beside him at my funeral, wishing he knew I was there. I watched him lay a yellow rose on my grave because he knew it was my favorite flower. That poor yellow rose, the only piece of color among the gray home of the dead where my body slept.

After two weeks of watching Carter fade more and more from the world around him, the more I knew that only I could save him from this prison he had locked himself in. I knew he regretted not saying ‘I love you’ before I got in my car and met death on the interstate. We had tossed those three words around without truly knowing the power and danger they carried. The evening before I died, we had gotten in a little snippy fight. It was nothing serious, just a silly little argument that meant nothing in the long run. I hadn’t been mad, knowing the next day it would be like nothing had ever happened and I would be back in his strong arms. But I knew how Carter tortured himself for not saying ‘I love you’ one last time. But I was also to blame. I didn’t say ‘I love you’ either.

I floated, or whatever it is we do, to our school and down the bustling halls. After two weeks tears were no longer flowing down the faces of my friends, but their hearts would never stop weeping. I saw Carter amidst our friends. He was physically with them but his mind was far off. I couldn’t stand watching Carter give up on life. I could see it in his gray eyes, that he thought he could see the door of death. If I but had a heart it would have been splitting so perfectly down the center to see him lose his grasp on hope. I went right to him, through our friends with their petty worries masking their true pain. This was the moment. The moment I had dreaded. I figured it would be easier if I could just touch him, but my hands went right through him. My spirit hovered so close to him that I could hear every breath and every flutter of his heart beat. If there was a heart beat pounding from within me, it would be thumping at full speed for the whole world to hear. Then I let them go; the words that were the key to letting him go. Those three words which once flew so easily between our lips, now weighed a thousand pounds of truth and meaning. Those words were connected to hundred of memories both the good and bad. Our first kiss. When we held hands at school for the first time. Our first fight. When we danced together in the rain. When my parents got divorced and he kissed my tears as they raced down my face. Every one of those memories balanced on the three most dangerous words any person could ever say. “I love you” They escaped from me and into the world. No one else could hear it, but I knew Carter could hear my words in the gust of wind that brushed his face. He looked directly at me, as though he could see me. The next part was the hardest. However, it was also the easiest. It was the hardest because I knew I had to let Carter go and let him be another girl’s lover. It was the easiest because I knew it meant that he could move on and live the life he was supposed to live without me holding him back. As I said that last word, it met him in another gust of misplaced summer air. “Goodbye”. Before he could look for me again, I turned and left with the knowledge that though my life had ended Carters was just beginning