What’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever given up?
For about a full minute I sat here trying to figure out when I wrote this. I didn’t, but I could have written almost every word.What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever given up?
What did that feel like?
Was it worth it?
I want you to understand that I don’t intend for my answer to be snarky, and I don’t feel cynical. The most difficult thing I’ve ever had to give up was blind hope in my first marriage. I held onto it, completely unreasonably, for many years. This unreasonable hope was even the vehicle through which two of my three kids came to exist.
To shed it felt like molting. It’s impossible for me to describe how difficult or painful it was to let go of so many preconceptions and demands I’d held about marriage for so long. My marriage ideals were at the core of my identity. There’s nothing trite in saying that to let them go felt like death to me.
Life is complex, and it’s never constraint-free. One of the most liberating metamorphoses I’ve ever undergone began with the epiphany that the marriage I’d idealized was fatally poisoned, and as such had become an irretrievably lethal constraint for everyone in it. I can say without hesitation that every member of my now divided family is better in ways both profound and simple, obvious as well as subtle. The letting go was undeniably worth it.
