A word about letting go.

Everything passes in life; that is just a simple fact that, although many of us would like for it to be false, is inevitable. And with that comes the concept of constantly having to let go and move forward in life.

But on the real, letting go can be the most bittersweet of things. It can be emerging from the water of a deep ocean, being able to take long gasps of air again, but at the same, having to look around at where you are with no clear thought of where you should be looking. Letting go is simply turning around and looking out into vast sea of nothing and everything.

Letting go can be heartbreaking and unyielding and terrifying. It can be jumping off a cliff, feeling the rush of air racing through your ears and your legs and your chest and your hands and your lungs, and the increasing velocity of your body toward the floor, knowing that there is safe landing below, but not knowing anything of your destination.

It can be frustrating. Like trying to scrape cookie dough off of your hands when you haven't used any flour. While most of it is able to come off with some tugging, there remain small pieces that stay stuck to your skin, the pieces that only with intense scrubbing and soap and water will come off. The pieces that, metaphorically, you don't want to let go of, but know you must.

At the same time it can be a sigh of relief, one of those long, minute-long, drawn out, trails of air leaving your body, taking with it the stress and the pressure and the weight of another person.

Letting go of someone means letting go of the task of compensating and adjusting; it gives you the chance to simply focus on bettering yourself the way you feel is best. It means learning to grow selfishly and carelessly and aimlessly. It means giving yourself the chance to become simply an individual again, to lose all titles and be who you are.

Letting go means viewing new things as being opportunities for personal improvement rather than as something to fear. It means giving your mind a chance to increase in it's vastness and complexity.

Sometimes letting go means accepting that, yes, that person may have been your world for a while, but now you have the chance to build a new one. It means being able to tell yourself, yes you may have been in pieces for quite a while now, but that doesn't mean you don't have the capability to stitch yourself back together. You may be in pieces, but that doesn't mean you've lost any part of yourself.

Everyone says "new year, new me," and althought that's very, very cliché, and kind of makes me want to vomit, I strongly believe in the fact that the time to change myself is now. Coincidentally for me, now happens to be the start of this new year.

So as this "new me" going into 2016, I will take a vow to myself that I will let go this year. I will party hard, smile, and laugh as much as possible. I will learn to let go in it's most pure form: I'll hold my own, know my name, and go my own way. (j.m.)