everything platonic ✓

chapter 4

Let It Go

The bus ride home is a blur of shifting landscapes and familiar road signs that pass by like memories I’ve tried to leave behind. I sit with my head pressed against the window, feeling the hum of the engine, letting it drown out the world around me. Outside, everything is bathed in that soft, golden glow of late afternoon, the kind that turns even the ugliest buildings into something beautiful, like the world itself is trying to hide its scars beneath a layer of nostalgia.

I close my eyes and let myself drift back to that day – a memory, sharp and vivid, like the first cut of winter’s chill on exposed skin. Rosie and I were sitting on the steps of the school, our backs against the cold concrete, watching the sky turn shades of orange and pink as the sun dipped below the horizon. She was talking about her latest crush, a boy in our grade with a crooked smile and the confidence of someone who’s never had to think twice about himself.

I barely heard her words, lost in the cadence of her voice, the way she laughed, her face lighting up like a spark. There was something so effortless about the way she could lose herself in the moment, like she wasn’t weighed down by the past, like she wasn’t carrying a thousand memories on her shoulders, each one a little heavier than the last. I envied her for that. For her ability to let go, to move forward without looking back.

But I was never like that. Every memory clung to me like a shadow, each one a small ghost haunting the corners of my mind. I collected them, cherished them, like a hoarder afraid to let anything slip through her fingers. And yet, the more I held on, the less I seemed to have. The memories were slipping away, fading at the edges, turning hazy and indistinct, like an old photograph left out in the sun too long.

I’d been too afraid to let go, too afraid that if I did, I’d lose something essential, something that made me who I was. But now, looking back, I can’t even remember half the things I was holding on to. Faces blur, voices grow faint, moments that once felt so important now reduced to a vague feeling, a sense of something lost but not quite remembered.

It scares me sometimes, the way memories slip through my fingers, the way the past becomes something soft and pliable, something I can mold into whatever shape I want. But even as I try to hold on, I can feel it slipping away, leaving behind only fragments, pieces that don’t quite fit together, like a puzzle with too many missing parts.

When I get home, the house is quiet. My mother’s at work, my brother’s room empty, the silence settling over me like a blanket, warm and stifling. I walk into my room, feeling the weight of the empty walls, the blank spaces where posters used to hang, where memories once lived. It’s all gone now, packed away in boxes or discarded, as if erasing the physical traces could somehow erase the memories themselves.

I sit on my bed and close my eyes, letting the memories wash over me, fragments of conversations, laughter, whispered secrets under the cover of darkness. But they’re slipping away, turning hazy and indistinct, like sand slipping through my fingers. I want to hold on, to keep every detail, every word, but it’s like trying to hold water in my hands, each drop slipping away no matter how tightly I grasp.

And then, as if from nowhere, her voice comes to me, soft and distant, like an echo from the past.

“Let it go, Narisa.”

I can hear the words as clearly as if she’s standing right beside me, her voice warm and gentle, the way it always was when she thought I was being too hard on myself. “You can’t carry it all,” she’d say, her fingers brushing against mine, grounding me, reminding me that I didn’t have to hold on so tightly.

But I was never as brave as she was. I couldn’t let go, couldn’t move on, couldn’t leave the past behind. I was too afraid that if I did, I’d lose myself, lose everything that made me who I was.

Now, sitting here in the quiet, I wonder if she was right all along. If maybe holding on has only made me heavier, weighed me down, kept me trapped in this endless cycle of regret and nostalgia.

I open my eyes and look around the room, at the empty walls, the blank spaces where memories once lived. And for the first time, I feel a flicker of something like freedom, a small spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, I can let go. That I can leave the past behind and step into the present, unburdened, unchained.

But even as I think it, I know it’s a lie. Because part of me will always be here, lost in the shadows of old memories, clinging to the past, too afraid to let go.