To Love and Let Go

by Rachel Brathen

  As much as I fought it, I had no choice but to surrender to the move to Lidingö. That meant a new school, of course. I didn’t want to admit it but I desperately wanted to fit in and make friends, so I made my dad buy me a new pair of Diesel jeans. Lidingö was all about designer labels, fancy purses, and money and I had no idea how I would survive. All I knew was city life—I listened to hip-hop, smoked cigarettes, and spoke suburban slang.

  The first day of high school was awful. I wore my new jeans and a trucker hat pulled down low, trying to keep my head down. In the hallway, a senior yelled at me, “It’s okay to be a lesbian!” I thought I was going to sink through the floor and die. I looked like a lesbian? Was that a bad thing? I guessed yes. Was it my Diesel jeans? My hat? I had thought my hat was cool; it was what all my friends in the inner city wore. I took the hat off and stuffed it into my bag. I didn’t speak to anyone all day and when I got home I cried to my mom, “It’s horrible. I won’t survive a week!” “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll make friends.” I scoffed and ran to my room, slamming the door behind me.

  A day later, I came home with a new group of girlfriends. I’d hit it off with a girl in my class who was also a smoker (cigarettes, like broken bones, were good icebreakers) and had introduced me to her girl gang. My new friends were different from the ones I’d had in the inner city. Everyone had money, and it turned out—so did I! My father had become a nice source of revenue for new clothes, a brand-new scooter (so I could get to and from school without having to take the bus), and vacations with friends to places like the French Alps and the south of Spain. I’d never cared about money before—actually, I’d always been embarrassed about the fact that my dad was well-off—but now, living in one of the wealthiest areas of Stockholm, it was suddenly an asset.

  One of those trips was to Åre, a ski resort in the north of Sweden. Some of the kids rented their own cabins and I was amazed at what they were allowed to do on their own at only fifteen years old. My dad had a vacation house in Åre so I stayed with him. I spent every night before my one o’clock curfew getting hammered on beer the bartenders snuck to us.

  It was one of those nights at the bar I met Jonathan. He was tall and handsome, and the moment I saw him I felt butterflies in my stomach. There was something about him—he felt a little bit dangerous, and I liked it. The bonus was that he was four and a half years older and a good kisser. When the week in Åre ended and it was time for me to go home, he texted me. Want to hang out in Stockholm, too? Thus began what would turn into my first big love.

  Something happened when Jonathan and I were together. It was like we were meant to be, like all the stars of the universe had aligned just to put us in each other’s arms. When I was with him I didn’t feel insecure anymore. I felt safe, at home. We started spending every waking second together and soon we seemed to disappear into each other.

  Jonathan was a sweet guy but had a very troubled life. He made most of his money in less-than-legal ways, roped into criminal activity by his family. He told me he wanted to go to law school but that transitioning from easy money to a regular job was too difficult. He was also a graffiti artist and we spent most weekends driving around the city looking for the next canvas. I was on the lookout for cops while he and his friends painted huge murals across subway stations and tunnels. I loved it—the thrill of doing something dangerous excited me. Jonathan was insanely jealous, and over time, I became jealous, too. We’d go from intense lovemaking to screaming and throwing things at each other. When he got angry his eyes went black. The fighting was always followed by enormous passion, tears, and clinging tighter to each other than ever before. More than once he got into a bar fight over some guy looking at me. I liked that I had a man who would fight for me, but even at that young age a part of me wondered, Is it supposed to be this hard? Over time, his temper became my new normal, and when he chased me up the stairs to our house after a huge fight one evening and broke the window to my bedroom with his fist to grab me by the hair, I still didn’t think he’d gone too far. Neither did I think so when—after a dinner party where I was seated next to a friend of his and I accused him of being delusional when he grew suspicious—he slapped me in the face under a streetlight and ripped my dress to shreds. Nor that one night he maced me in the face and I felt like I was going to suffocate. I thought it was love. In a strange way, it was.

  During my senior year, I ditched my classes as often as I could to be with Jonathan. On my eighteenth birthday he gave me a ring and I accepted it. Eventually, we stopped leaving his apartment and would sleep until late in the afternoon. In the evenings, we drank. My life reeked of Bacardi Razz and cheap vodka. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, and even though I thought I’d found my soul mate, I was starting to feel really lost.

  At the time, Mom was in the middle of divorcing Stefan Number Two and had recently spent a week at a meditation center looking for, and apparently finding, some answers. Knowing I was struggling, she recommended I go, too. A part of me was so terrified I thought I was literally going to die, but I went anyway. I was expecting to find the reasons behind my sadness, maybe work though some issues with my dad, but instead I found silence. The days were a mix of active meditations, group sessions, exercises for living a healthy life and, in between, absolute silence. It was in that silence I realized something momentous: I didn’t have a clue as to who I was.

  For as long as I could remember I hadn’t been able to hear over the voice in my head that dictated my life. The voice that said I wasn’t good enough, or pretty enough, or thin enough, or smart enough; the voice that said I didn’t deserve love; that I deserved to have bad things happen to me; that life wasn’t meant to be good and beautiful, only survived. As that voice began to quiet down, I started having profound realizations about my life. The many traumatic events from my childhood that had never healed resurfaced, everything from circumstances around my birth to my parents separating, my stepfather dying, moving from place to place, my mother’s suicide attempt, my dad’s absence, all the new family constellations, and the divorces that always followed . . . I saw that my life had been a series of separations and losses. How could I trust anyone or anything when I was always waiting for someone to leave me? I was eighteen and only just beginning to scratch the surface, but it was a start.

  After a meditation on the last day it dawned on me that I had spent most of my life making decisions based off what would make other people happy. I’d been so confused, focusing on pleasing everyone but myself and bending over backward to try to fix the chaos around me. Sitting there on my meditation cushion, I realized: I don’t want to go home. Immediately a twinge of guilt touched my heart—what would my mother say if I didn’t come home? It would hurt her, surely. She would be upset. Having spent my whole life trying to avoid upsetting her, what objectively looked like an easy decision felt insurmountable. But . . . What did I feel? What about me? I picked up the notebook I’d been journaling in throughout the week. “What’s the most loving thing to do?” I wrote in big letters across the page. We’d spent a lot of time at the center meditating on and talking about self-love, and how sometimes the most loving action to take isn’t necessarily the easiest one. In that moment, everything became clear. Choosing to spare my mother’s feelings by pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t would not be a loving thing to do. Neither was ignoring my own needs to avoid confrontation, or choosing someone else’s happiness over my own. “I choose myself,” I wrote. “The most loving thing I can do, is to choose myself.”

  I left the retreat week with insight that I didn’t know what to do with, and the realization that I was angry with my mom was a big one. It was a strange feeling. I’d never, ever been mad at her before. My main focus had always been keeping her happy and lifting her up, but I found that she was getting really heavy to carry. I knew I couldn’t face her, feeling the way I did, and chose to stay with Jonathan instead of returning home when the retreat ended. I still thought of him as the only co
nstant in my life, but when I saw him, I didn’t feel the happiness I was expecting to feel. We made love the night I got back and I remember thinking, for the first time since we met, I don’t think this is it. I had experienced such profound joy and release at the retreat center—why couldn’t I hold on to that feeling when I was with him?

  After that, I started making changes in my life. I quit smoking, just like that. I cut down on alcohol. There was something better out there than makeup and boys and drinking. Most important, I continued the inquiries I had started during my week away. For the first time in my young life I asked myself questions: Does this make me happy? Is this where I’m supposed to be? Life was pulling me in two directions. A part of me wanted to go back to my old unconscious self, and a part of me wanted to explore the new way of life I’d just had a taste of.

  After a few months of fits and starts I returned to the center for another week of self-realization. It was even more intense than the first time. This one was heavily focused on childhood. A week of deep dives into my past was exhausting and so much emotion was surfacing I hardly knew what to do with it all. One morning I was walking into the meditation hall, dragging my feet at the thought of yet another dynamic meditation. Dynamic meditation is a meditation that allows for emotional release, using the body as a gateway into the heart. By moving intensely, we are able to quiet the mind and make our way toward deep stillness. It’s as challenging as it is amazing. As I walked into the room, I saw a woman on a yoga mat, moving her body from pose to pose. I stopped to watch her. How could something be that important and feel so good that she rose earlier than everyone else to do it? It seemed so sacred. I had never felt that way about anything. I want that, I thought.

  During the days that followed I unearthed more about my past than I ever had before. Memories I’d repressed came flooding out, and I realized that the anger I’d felt toward my mom after the first retreat was just the tip of the iceberg. One specific exercise involved an emotionally charged guided meditation followed by an exploration of our relationship with our mothers. After that they handed out crayons for us to draw a life-sized picture of our moms. When they introduced the exercise I thought it sounded ridiculous. I had to draw a picture of my mom? Really? I hadn’t done that since I was a little girl. A memory surfaced: me sitting at our old kitchen table drawing a picture of my family with crayon. In stick figure shapes I drew me, my little brother, Stefan, and Mom. The memory made me smile, and then filled me with sadness. Why hadn’t I included my dad? Even as a child I was confused about my family. No wonder I had to sit here at some retreat center to figure everything out. I felt anger bubble up inside me and before I knew it, I was sketching my mom with wide, harsh strokes on the giant roll of paper on the floor in front of me. When I’d finished I almost laughed. I still drew like a child. I had given my mom shoulder-length, straw-colored hair, and she was wearing a blue, triangle-shaped dress. Her mouth was drawn in an upside down U; she was sad. Of course she was sad. For as long as I could remember, she had been sad. Looking at the picture I’d drawn, it didn’t look funny to me anymore.

  Someone helped me hang the picture up on the wall in front of me, and soon I heard the facilitator’s voice on the speakers. “Feel your body in this moment. What are you feeling? What’s moving in your heart? If your mother was here, what would you tell her?” I remained silent, not knowing what to say. My mind told me this was ridiculous; I was supposed to speak to a drawing as if I were talking to my mom? It wasn’t until I touched my hands to my face that I realized I was crying. Ridiculous or not, I was channeling emotions that were very real. “Move your body,” the facilitator urged us. “Use your voice! See what comes.” I heard people around me begin to talk and soon the room was filled with emotion. Using the energy of other people to get me going, I gave it a try. “You are always sad,” I told the picture of my mom hanging in front of me. “You are always sad!” My voice was growing stronger. “Even when other people think you’re happy, I can tell that you’re sad. It’s exhausting trying to make you happy all the time. I don’t want to do it anymore.” Suddenly, the words came pouring out of me. “Actually, I can’t make you happy! I can’t do it! It’s exhausting just to try. Also, you left me. You tried to kill yourself! What kind of a mother does that to her own kids?” I don’t know how it happened, but I was shouting now. Everything I’d always wanted to tell her but had been too afraid to speak out loud, I was telling her now. What had started off as sadness was transforming into anger. “Why can’t you just be happy like a normal mom???” I shouted. I had spent my whole life worrying more about her than I did myself and it wasn’t until now that I realized that I actually had eighteen years of bottled-up anger and resentment inside of me. “I am so sick of your emotions! You take up too much space! There is no space for me to feel anything when you are so sad all the time!” Every word that came out of my mouth came both as news to me—I didn’t know that I had been feeling this way—and as something I knew as absolute truth. I had spent my whole life playing small to make space for her. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Always waiting for her to leave me again. As I shouted I began stomping my feet—I was so, so angry. Someone handed me a big pillow and before I knew it I had collapsed on the ground, punching my fists into it with all of my might.

  Tears were streaming down my face and my nose was full of snot, but I didn’t care. In my eighteen years on this earth I had never before experienced a true release of emotion. It was absolutely cathartic and once I had started, I felt like I could go on forever. Anger and love and fear and sadness came pouring out of me, all wrapped up as one. In the midst of it all, I spoke a sentence that brought me to a full stop. “It wasn’t my fault.” It surprised me enough to actually stop me in my tracks. Where did that come from? What wasn’t my fault? I said it again. “It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.” I repeated it like a mantra, and as I did, something I had kept hidden in the deepest, darkest corners of my soul rose to the surface.

  A part of me had always felt responsible for Stefan’s death. As a child, I’d been convinced that it was my fault that he died, and although as an adult I could objectively see that it wasn’t, there was a little five-year-old girl inside of me that felt responsible. That pain, that guilt, had been there my entire life. Speaking the truth out loud now was like casting a magic spell, freeing me from blame and responsibility. “It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.” I was crying intensely now, curled up in a ball, shaking with grief. Every tear I hadn’t allowed myself to shed when the plane crashed, I cried now. The pain I’d never let myself feel when my mother tried to kill herself, I felt now. I cried for my mom and the horrible things she’d had to endure. I cried for my brother, who was so young. I cried for my dad, who I’d never seen cry, not once. But most of all I cried for myself. For having to grow up so fast. For the trauma I’d lived through. For the weight I’d had to carry my whole life. For the pain I’d carried. For the love I’d lost. For the guilt I’d held that wasn’t mine.

  I don’t know how long I laid there on the floor crying, but by the time I opened my eyes a new version of me looked out at the world. I felt a thousand pounds lighter. Something huge had shifted inside of me. I could stand taller, breathe a little easier. It was sad, and it was beautiful. When the session came to a close I walked out of the room exhausted, but with the hint of a smile on my lips. I felt free.

  Healing these broken parts of my past completely changed my life. I left the retreat floating, and started seeing how the things I was dealing with would keep resurfacing for as long as it took for me to figure them out. By finding the tools to deal with my past I was able to shed heavy layers of pain and defenses that had weighed me down for as long as I could remember. Without knowing exactly how, happiness began to seep in. I started eating healthier and meditating every day. I found myself waking up feeling . . . happy. Just, happy. It was a strange feeling, and something I’d never experienced
before. What kind of life could I create for myself out of this space? I thought. Soon, I realized I had to get away. I didn’t know where, just that it had to be without Jonathan. The journey I needed to go on was far outside of my comfort zone, and with him next to me I’d be stifled from challenging myself.

  Before I could give it too much thought, the universe stepped in. Two friends asked me to join them on a trip to Costa Rica. I didn’t hesitate. I saved up as much money as I could and hoped it was enough for three months of hostel stays. I was terrified to go—I think a part of me knew that there would be no turning back. At the airport I almost changed my mind; the thought of leaving Jonathan behind felt impossible. I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. It felt like a loss, probably because it was. I remembered one of the key insights I’d had at the meditation center: If you’re ever at a crossroads, ask yourself which choice is more loving. And then go do that. In this situation—what was more loving? Staying behind, or moving forward? I closed my eyes. In my heart I already knew. Forward we go.

  let go

  3

  * * *

  PRACTICE

  From the moment my feet touched the ground in Costa Rica I felt divinely guided. My panic over leaving Jonathan subsided, and I met people who shared my new view of life. I felt like a snake shedding its skin. For every day that passed, I was becoming lighter, leaving pieces of my past behind. During those first weeks in Costa Rica I was able to rid myself of the preconceived ideas I’d had about who I was “supposed” to be, and for the first time in my life I started to feel like myself. Turns out, without that heavy past weighing me down, I was a pretty remarkable person! I felt like a magnet, attracting beautiful experiences everywhere I went. In Sweden I was alone on my newfound spiritual journey; I had thoughts and ideas about life that didn’t fit with anyone I knew. Here, I felt completely at home. The anxiety that had filled my body for most of my life vanished and suddenly I felt strong, present, purposeful. I started journaling and devoured spiritual books like never before. Every day I got up before sunrise to sit on the beach and meditate. First I repeated the meditation techniques I’d learned at the retreat center, but soon I had a full library of different kinds of techniques and meditations to use. I had a revelation: if I did these things every day; if I sought out peace, it was actually available to me. I wasn’t going to find it at the bottom of a tequila bottle or on the couch watching TV. The life I wanted wasn’t going to fall into my lap one day—I had to get out there and fight relentlessly for it. And what a magical insight it was, that life didn’t have to be so difficult! My whole life I’d felt like I was treading water, fighting for my life. And now, here I was, my feet in the warm sand, no idea what the future would bring, and I felt more at peace than I ever had before. Who knew life could be this easy?