This past week has probably been the hardest week I’ve had to live through in a long time. I’ve taken more losses than I can count. And it finally dawned on me how irritating it is to be on the receiving end of a, “It gets better. Keep going,” speech from friends even though they mean well. I have been handing out a lot of those lately without ever considering how maddening it is to be on the other end, to be on the end where you cannot see how it’s going to even begin to get better. It’s annoying because sometimes you don’t want to be told that it’ll get better. You don't want to be told how capable you are of overcoming it. Sometimes you just want the fact that you are struggling to hit home, to linger in the air, to be heard. Sometimes you just want to be allowed to curl up into a ball, contemplate how you could have done better, how you should have done better. Sometimes you just want to wrap yourself in a corner and bawl your eyes out. You just want to feel the loss. And you know what? That’s completely okay. It’s completely okay to take some time to ponder upon a loss. It’s okay to feel negative emotions sometimes. It’s okay to sit with negative emotions for a minute and let it all sink in. In fact, it is vital that you allow yourself to feel them as opposed to peppering them with “positive thoughts”. Staying positive is good but it must not be used to ignore all the negatives that we encounter because negatives are a part of life. We won’t always win. It won’t always go our way. You have to learn how to deal with that without shoving it under a pile of “positivity” because sometimes, thinking positively will only take you so far. Sometimes life is just an absolute mess and no positive thoughts will change that. So it’s fine if you need some time to just be down a while. But the one thing this week has taught me is how vital moving on and letting go is. No matter how massive the loss, you ought to dust yourself off, pick up the pieces and keep moving. Because life will not wait for you. It waits for no one. It will go on with or without you. Us not being able to alter the past is indication that we must always leave it behind. And while it’s okay to be sad about it for a while, it’s counterintuitive to spend too much time thinking about things you now have no control over, thinking about the what ifs, could haves and should haves. It’s in the past. It’s all gone now. You cannot control it. It happened the way it happened. That’s it. Leave it there. You learn your lessons and keep going. And I am well aware of the fact that that is easier said than done. But you hardly have a choice. You could either stay down and lick your wounds while the earth keeps spinning. Or you could learn how to maneuver the hurdle you tripped over and keep going. Your choice.