I was one week back on this Island, almost two weeks into the new year. Work was not really busy so I finally had some time to do some reading, writing, movies and go to the beach. But it was the rainy season with lots of wind, so hanging by the beach for too long left me with a cold stomach and I had the flu. So what’s left to do was reading and writing, which I had done a lot of that weekend. I picked up reading ‘To love and let go’ from Yoga Girl Rachel Brathen and jeez I couldn’t have picked a better time to read this book (*sarcastically).

She wrote a lot about grief and oh is January a very emotional month for me. As I was reading how she walked into the sea and thought about keeping on walking further into the sea, I started crying. Not because of what she did, but how it felt similar to what I’ve done three years ago. No, I was never suicidal, but I have been very depressed for a long time. And I had my own way of dealing with it at different moments in time. Most of the time I was acting out but whenever I was alone, I just wanted to sleep my life away. I spent a great deal of time wanting to do nothing but sleep.

It was January. The first two anniversaries I spent crying and being sad, angry and depressed. On the third anniversary I decided it was enough, I’d gotten tired of feeling like that, so I went to get my first two tattoos for me to remind myself every time I was feeling like that, cause after three years I realized the scar will always be there. The first tattoo I got was a semicolon with the wings of a butterfly for the freedom after I decided that ‘my story isn’t over’. And the second were four dots, for ‘This too shall pass’, for those are the four words that remind me that nothing is ever permanent, so also not the way you feel.

It has been four years. If I could’ve gotten pregnant I would’ve had a five year old by now. But I couldn’t, so I don’t. A lot has changed in these past years. As it was too painful for me to carry on with the life I had planned for myself, I dropped it all. The plans, the job, the living arrangements, the life partner. That life didn’t fit me anymore, it was one layer too heavy to carry along. So I let go, even though I loved my life so much just the way it was, I didn’t fit. To love and let go, to love and let go, to love and let go, right?