Does letting go mean deciding to be happy by yourself?

I have said it once, and I’d say it again:  I will always hate Honey and Clover.  Yes, you read it right.  I hate Honey and Clover.  I mentioned it in GRSI comments as a response to usagijen’s shared item.  It digs up my own share of bittersweet memories and the insecurities that I have long buried.  But despite the hatred for the show, why the attraction to it?

Otou-san wrote about the things that each character has to learn or has learned to let go of.  He asked whether there is one among the characters that his readers identified with.  This made me think back and immediately…  there’s this little tug in one’s heart for realizing that whatever it was, it still lives deep in the recesses of the core.

Takemoto’s character irritates me most.  He makes me see that despite the fact that you would want to hold on to what you see as the most precious thing at that moment, when the other party wishes to be else where, you eventually have to accept the fact that you can never have them.

First, there’s denial.  You keep on hoping for a chance that it will still happen, someday…  That they will realize that they, too would want something deeper than whatever it is you have.  Communication is open and from time to time, you share future plans.  You go crazy every time you would learn about the dates the person had the previous night but you opt to let it slide.  They choose to be with you when they are down and out.  You have seen each other’s best and worst.

Then there’s anger.  You blame yourself for being such and idiot allowing yourself to hope for something that is not even supposed to have been entertained.  You know very well that the person was never into you in that manner.  Add the fact that you were bluntly told that the other party sees you as someone who shares a common interest with them like a sibling, a very close friend that they care about.

You hold on to all the shoulda, coulda, woulda and swing between the denial and anger stages until you realize that you are going nowhere.  You see them really happy with another whom you also know.  Despite the fact that it eats you up each time, you finally decide to move on and start anew.  You say thank you for the memories and start building new ones.  You finally decided to learn to say goodbye to the roomful of memories you shared with each other.

Finally, comes acceptance.

Takemoto, as Otou-san said, wrote the report, experienced it all and end up not having the girl.  I was in an almost the same situation.

It has been a while since I have started my own journey of letting go but there are times that it still bites me.  I can’t help feeling depressed over storylines like this.  It still hits me…  ”is something that will disappear the same as something that never existed?“…  Is love that was never returned ever the same as love that never even began?

Maybe, it is just a case of being lonely without us realizing that we are.  We have been doing so much with our hands that we were not able to pause and feel.  As ghostlightning pointed out, we can be lonely among friends.  This, I strongly agree.  Maybe, it is just our egocentric nature, as usagijen mentioned in her post.  However, despite misery loving company proves right, at the end of the day, you would have to face the same pangs of loneliness that these memories carry.