Valentine’s Day has a way of resurrecting past relationships, often repainting them in colours far softer than they ever were. Last year, my Valentine’s Day was magnificent, a joy that spilt neatly into my birthday two days later. This year, however, I enter February carrying uncertainty.
When a relationship ends, confusion follows almost immediately. Our minds spiral with familiar questions – Why did this happen? Would things be different if I had done something else? Did I deserve this? We bury ourselves in lectures, deadlines and part-time shifts, hoping business will drown out the noise. But heartbreak has a way of catching up. It hits you on an ordinary January afternoon when you realise that not only the person you loved has left, but the version of you that existed with them has gone too.
That moment often marks the beginning of letting go. Someone once told me, “You can’t love someone into loving you.” For a long time, I didn’t understand this. Now I do. You can give someone your time, your patience, your whole heart and still, they may choose not to stay. When that happens, we are left with two options: to hold on or to let go.
Instinctively, we hold on first. Letting go feels like surrender, and surrender feels like loss. We cling to the imagined future we built with them, to the happiness we once felt, convincing ourselves it wasn’t really that bad. Nostalgia is persuasive; it softens the edges and edits out the pain.
Gradually, hope begins to thin. Messages are met with silence, or worse, irritation. Reality becomes impossible to ignore: they have left. This is where letting go truly begins. To me, letting go does not mean resentment, nor does it mean rewriting love into hatred. It is an act of acceptance. You accept that they did not choose you, and you step back. If cutting me out of their life made theirs better, then I was collateral and accepting that is its own kind of strength. After all, it is hard to hate someone you once loved deeply.
Letting go is a prolonged heartbreak, but it is survivable. There will be days when life feels unbearably heavy, when you question whether it is worth continuing at all. In those moments, remind yourself: there was a life before them, and there will be one after. Make lunch plans with friends. Read the book that has been sitting untouched on your shelf. Binge-watch the Netflix series everyone keeps talking about.
When my own relationship ended, I threw myself into new distractions. I started doodling, filling pages without purpose. I even got two new ear piercings, hoping it might overpower the emotional pain. It didn’t. What helped instead was allowing myself to feel the hurt rather than running from it. Healing demands honesty.
As of February 2026, I have chosen not to hold on, not because I fear change, but because I believe the connection we shared is not what they were hoping for. I understand the risk of disappointment, yet life is short, and what is life without hope and dreams?
Letting go or holding on — there is no universally correct answer. Whatever you choose, trust that you will be okay. Ignore the noise of other people’s opinions and the anxieties of an imagined future. A true connection between two people is worth the risk. And to everyone forming new bonds in university corridors and seminar rooms, I hope your connections last, but if they don’t, I hope you learn that your heart will.
