You let her go because after all, we're told that's what you do if you love someone who doesn't love you. Or can't commit to you. Or can't see you the way you long to be seen. Or doesn't treat you the way you deserve to be treated.

And then you wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

For the call that never comes.

You go through the motions. You put one foot in front of the other until eventually, it gets a little easier. And then you slowly but surely begin to get stronger, a little more every day.

And then one day, when you're almost over her, it comes. The call. Of course, you recognize her number. You may have deleted her name from your phone, but you'll always remember her number. A part of you wants to answer. But another part of you knows nothing's changed.

Nothing's changed. If it has, she'll go out of her way to show you she has. But otherwise, it's nothing new. But if you answer, you're in it all over again.

I lived for that call. I waited for that call. I put my life on hold for that call. Until one day, I realized I was the only one putting myself through this pain. If she called, what would she be looking for, but more of the same? I'd be right back there, wanting more than she had to give, hoping I could change her, trying to find a way to make her love me, proving my worth to someone who wasn't worthy of measuring my own worth against.

I was hurting myself far more than she had ever hurt me by holding onto the fantasy, the dream of what it could be if only she could see it like I did. Oh, the potential! So much potential, but so little reality. Only in my own mind did it exist like it did.

So I took out all my mementos I had kept of the two of us. The ones I was still holding on so tightly to.  The messages I had saved from her because they were the only thing that showed the way it used to be. The photos of the memories of a different time and place. The gifts she had given me. I let them all go.

And on my terms, in my way, through my own tears, I chose me instead of yet another her. I was worth more than this waiting, more than this hoping, more than this living for someone else instead of myself. I took all my hopes and dreams off this girl who had shown me over and over again she wasn't capable of giving me what I was looking for and took them back for me. I found a little seed of hope, a faint glimmer of a dream and took a chance on me for a change, instead of always taking them on everyone else except me. I didn't know it then, but it was the beginning of my own dreams coming true.

Let her or him or whoever it is that keeps holding you back, keeping you from living the life that you're meant to live, let them go. There's a life to be lived inside you. There's a love to be given and received by someone truly deserving of you.

Except you.