A love story about letting go

It’s been a few weeks since I and my partner became uncoupled.

I challenged myself if I should write this story so early.

I know there will be other degrees of beauty to be realized in a few months or years from now. I also know awakening may take either years or just an instance.

Or maybe — awakening has always been here, awaiting its time. Maybe — this is the story that has always been inside me.

For 5 years, our love story has been aching to be told. I believe stories have their own spirits, breaths, and desires. Once a story calls to be brought forward, the teller must set it free.

Therefore, I don’t need to make this decision. I simply keep the channel open and let the words pour themselves.

Once, a friend asked me how I could maintain a long-distance relationship — especially when I and my partner had not met for half a year. My hand found its way to my chest and my mouth was merely narrating what had been tattooed in my heart, “Because he’s always with me in here”.

I and my partner have learned to hold each other’s hands for 5 years despite distances. We have transcended thousands of “miles” to be with each other — geographically, culturally, and generationally.

Our relationship has put a mirror in front of me — naked — so I could see the wounds I’ve been carrying. Our relationship has broken my heart open so the light could get inside and heal it. Our relationship has also shown me how to draw stars around my beautiful scars.

I was gifted the “dress” of love and invited to take off my “armors”. So I could liberate myself from its weight and step toward happiness.

The journey we’ve been through has also been my journey of rebirth. I’ve gone to hell and returned from hell — always sheltered in love.

We’re proud to call ourselves partners, soulmates, and family.

Life has paired us and parted us with its kindest magic. It keeps unfolding the lessons we need to learn and presenting the truths we need to honor. We realized we were meant to separate paths the same way we had realized we had been meant to join paths.

The decision was made for us — should we accept to exercise the truth and take the lesson. The decision was awaiting me while I was learning the other lessons preparing me for this. When the time came, it patted me on my shoulder, “Let go, Kim. You’re ready”.

We didn’t need to make any decision. We honored the truth and exercised it.

Being ready doesn’t mean I did not ache and my soul did not fall to its knees. During the years, we have showered ourselves in wordless tears as it first emerged. I no longer kicked and screamed. Yet, for days I woke up being completely numbed away from perceiving either pain or joy and life appeared to have no meaning.

I have prayed to be able to cry, paining to be liberated. I have sought salvation by the ocean. I have secretly wished to cheat this lesson.

But awakening cannot be undone and its intervention is full of blessing. Awakening always has only one question “Kim, are you free?”.

True love sets each other free. In various ways have I learned to set myself and my partner free. The last — perhaps — lesson was inevitable — to let go. And let each other fly solo in our own skies, accompanied only by our unfading love and support for one another.

“If you love something, set it free”. Every time I asked myself, in the depth of my despair, “What can I do for us, for love?”, the answer arose “Set love free” — should I accept to exercise it.

I woke up to the truth I wasn’t having love. Love was having me. The same way Mother Earth is having humans. I realized I wasn’t doing love. Love was doing me. The same way I am being breathed. Love beats with its own heart, with or without my acknowledgment of its motion. The same way our bodies run autonomously on their own.

Over again and again in my lifetime, love has invited me to open up for it. When I took upon love, I also found courage — the courage to say, “I’ll accept the invitation to learn a life after my partner” — a life I feared to be lonely and unloved, but I have discovered it wasn’t true.

Love presents in me and beyond me. Love presents in us and beyond us. The love we have cultivated in our soul-bond is not conditioned or confined by our relationship. The care and support we have for each other regardless of our relationship spell “chosen family”.

I realized it was our relationship that encaged love. To let go is to continue loving unconditionally.

I realized love has never left me. Embracing the freedom letting go has created for ourselves, I feel I have even more love and even more courage.

Love doesn’t take more than one. Neither does it take concepts. Love, once liberated, is abundant within.

In that way, our letting go was an uncoupling and unromanticization. We got healed up, instead of broken up.

As my partner gently held me through the pain of separation, I was deeply grateful for the gift of love he has always been offering me. We’re standing as two individuals in love and also freedom, who have each other’s back in our chosen family.

No matter what form or shape love unfolds to take, it has left me freer, stronger, and deeper in love. I never regret choosing love.