On Letting Go

The last two episodes of How I Met Your Mother have both been about the titular couple letting go of their greatest loves lost so that they can finally move on and find the love they deserve – each other.

The mother’s story is one of my most favorite episodes in the entire series. I loved finally finding out her back story, where she was all these years – all the moments that tied in with Ted’s lifeline, their near-misses and reasons why she’s perfect for him. The story of the great love of her life (before Ted) was heartbreaking.

A tear rolled down my cheek when he died. I felt sorry for her when she told a new friend:

“I’m on permanent hiatus in the love department. I guess I’m old fashioned. I believe that each of us only gets one. And I got mine already.”

Also when she turned down a guy asking her out, saying:

“I was in love with somebody a long time ago and he died. It’s silly but it’s like the first lottery ticket I ever bought was kaboom! Jackpot! And I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna win again. Not like that, anyway, so I don’t generally buy lottery tickets anymore.”

Then I lost it when she talked to her dead boyfriend right after Louis proposed to her:

“Hi Max, it’s me. Sorry to interrupt. I know you’re probably up there, playing baseball with your dad. Look, I’ve got a situation here. I think that I have been holding myself back from falling in love again and I think it’s because I can’t let you go. But you’re not here anymore so I have to ask this – would it be okay if I moved on? I realize that you have no way of answering that but – (wind blows) oh, okay, I will take that as a yes. Well in that case, I should get back in there.

“I guess this is it. For real this time. Bye, Max.”

She then went back inside the house and told Louis… no. I first interpreted this to mean that she hadn’t moved on after all. But then I saw this on Reddit:

People seem to be interpreting the mother saying no to Louis as she is not over her dead boyfriend. I see it as the exact opposite, it is her finally getting over him. She has been with Louis for a while knowing that she’s not in love with him but if she ends it then she’s alone again and has to open herself up to the possibility of love with someone else. When he proposes, she knows that she can’t say yes and stay with him forever because she wants love. So she says goodbye to Max and tells him no. Finally making herself available to fall in love again, just in time to meet a guy who’s finally given up the girl he’s been in love with for nine years.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Then she did a breathtaking rendition of “La Vie En Rose” while strumming the guitar which she got as a last present from Max… her final farewell song for him.

Meanwhile, Ted’s journey was very different. He dated a bazillion girls but never settled down with any of them because he wasn’t through pining over Robin, “the one that got away.”

It turns out he had a history of having trouble moving on from losses, when as a little boy, he became “best friends” with a balloon which floated away from his grasp when he got distracted by hotdogs. That incident taught him a lesson:

“When you love something, you can never let it go. Not even for a single second, or it’s gone forever.”

It was a lesson that took him nearly 30 years to unlearn.

But finally, the great love of his life (before the mother) was set to marry to his best friend, and on the morning of their wedding, Ted, who was best man, realized that he needed to let her go. So as he let go of her hand, he visualized her flying into the air like his balloon. I admit this was a bit cheesy, but a good parallelism.

Some people probably won’t get why it took both of them so long to let go. Shouldn’t it be easy to move on?

But I get them. I know a lot of people in real life who have a hard time letting go.

(1) The friend who has been in love with another friend who is in a relationship with someone else. It has been years, Ted. I mean, friend. Maybe she will move on once and for all on the morning of his wedding, which is set soon.

(2) The friend who has been in a relationship for years, but still talks about and stalks her “one who got away.” She constantly complains about her current boyfriend because he lacks traits that she loved in the ex.

(3) The friend who adamantly insists that she is over her breakup from years ago, but is still always entertaining thoughts of revenge and hating on men in general. Text “Bitterness OFF” to 2366, please.

(4) The friend who never got into a serious relationship for 12 years after her first one scarred her so much. No, wait, did I say friend? I meant to say – and then there’s me.

Like Ted, I seem to have a hard time letting go. Here is the proof – a lesson I learned from my nail. Yes, that’s right, I learned a life lesson from my NAIL. I’m that girl. The one who loves similes and metaphors and relates all the things to all the things.

Anyway. Remember that time when I tripped a few weeks ago and nearly fainted at the sight of my own blood? Aside from getting a huge bloody wound on my knee, about a quarter of the nail on my left ring finger had also gotten ripped off when I fell.

But it didn’t completely tear off, hanging on by a milli-inch (I know this isn’t really a word), so that when I got myself to a clinic, the doctor stuck it back in place by wrapping a bandage around my finger. He said he wouldn’t cut off the nail so it would serve as protection for my wound, but that the nail should drop off later on.

But I was stubborn. I didn’t want to let it drop off. I just couldn’t let go. So for days afterwards, I used adhesive bandages to keep it from doing so, wrapping the bandages so tightly to doubly ensure this. One time, I got too lazy to change the bandage daily and kept the same one on for 2 or 3 days. After a while, I noticed that the skin under the bandage was starting to hurt and itch, and it bothered me, so I peeled off the bandage and was shocked to find that I had fastened the bandage on too tightly that I had cut off blood circulation and given my finger the prune-like appearance of having been submerged in water for too long. In my misguided goal to hang on to my dead fingernail, I had caused harm to the rest of my finger.

Sometimes when you try too hard to hang on to something that you’re supposed to let go of, you only cause more harm to yourself.

So I realized that I needed to let go. I clipped the broken nail off. The skin turned back to its normal color, then later peeled off. My exposed raw wounded finger hurt that I couldn’t use it to type or shampoo my hair or wash dishes for weeks. But it has slowly healed, and the nail has started growing again, and now looks like this:

So I guess the moral lesson is… you have to know when to let go because when you finally do, good things happen.

So if you’re holding on to someone, or something, in an unhealthy way… just let go.

Just look at what happened to Ted and the mother when they did.