2/7 — What I Had to Let Go of to Become

After I started looking honestly at myself, I realised something I hadn't fully understood before: I couldn't build a different life while continuing to hold on to everything that belonged to the old one. I used to think change was mostly about adding something new— better habits, more discipline, better routines, new goals, new ways of thinking. But the more I worked on myself, the more I realised that becoming wasn't only about what I needed to add. There were also things I had to let go of. Old habits, automatic reactions, external validation, distractions, certain environments, certain dynamics, old beliefs about myself, and patterns that may have once protected me but no longer served me. And honestly, some of these things were much harder to release than I expected.

Some things weren't even things I thought of as harmful at first. There were things I believed would make me feel better, happier, or more fulfilled. But over time, I started noticing something uncomfortable. They weren't actually filling anything. They were just keeping me distracted from what was underneath, long enough that I didn't have to look at it. I wasn't healing anything. I was avoiding it. I was constantly reaching for external stimulation— people, noise, scrolling, consumption, partying every weekend until the sun is up, impulsive habits, drugs, smoking, anything that gave me a temporary rush or some kind of shift in how I felt. Not necessarily because those things were meaningful to me, but because they kept me from sitting in the space I didn't want to face. And the more I did that, the more disconnected I became from myself.

I think that was one of the first things I had to become honest about. Sometimes something doesn't have to be obviously bad for it to no longer belong in your life. Some things can feel good and still not be good for you. Some things can bring temporary comfort while keeping you from dealing with the thing that actually needs your attention. And that was difficult to recognise because I wasn't always letting go of things I hated. Some things were simply things I had outgrown.

1. Letting Go of What Felt Familiar

One of the strangest parts of changing is realising that the people who know you may know a version of you that no longer exists. When you start changing your habits, your priorities, your boundaries, even the way you spend your time, people notice. Some people understand, some become curious, some become confused, and some may simply prefer the version of you they already knew. I experienced that too. There were moments when I felt like people were looking at me and wondering, What happened to you? And the truth was, a lot had happened to me. Just not everything could be explained from the outside.

I was changing internally first, and sometimes the external changes came before I even had the language to explain them. There were times when I felt alienated, not necessarily because people had rejected me, but because I no longer felt completely at home in certain patterns of interaction that used to feel normal to me. I was becoming different, but I was still surrounded by people who remembered who I had been. And that was uncomfortable. I had to learn that I couldn't keep myself familiar just to make other people comfortable with my changes. Being misunderstood is sometimes part of changing. Not everyone is going to understand why your priorities have changed, why you no longer want certain things, or why something that used to be acceptable to you isn't anymore. And I've had to become okay with that.

2. The Habit of Negotiating With Myself

I also had to let go of something much more internal: the habit of negotiating with myself. I noticed how easy it was to know what I wanted to do and still find a reason not to do it. I could rationalise almost anything— one more time, it's not that serious, I'll start tomorrow, maybe I'm being too strict, maybe I should just go with the flow. These little negotiations seemed harmless when they were happening, but they accumulated. And eventually, I realised that I couldn't build a new life if I kept making exceptions every time something became uncomfortable.

I started paying more attention to the difference between what I wanted in the moment and what I actually wanted for my life, because those two things weren't always the same. Sometimes the decision that felt good immediately was the one that moved me further away from the person I wanted to become, while the uncomfortable decision was the one that brought me closer. That changed the way I looked at discipline. It stopped being about forcing myself to do things I didn't want to do and became more about becoming someone whose actions were consistent with what she said she wanted.

Because at some point, I had to stop asking myself what I felt like doing and start asking myself whether the choice I was making was actually aligned with the life I said I wanted. I couldn't keep saying I wanted one thing while repeatedly choosing another.

3. Learning to Sit With Discomfort

One of the biggest things I learned was how much I could use distraction to avoid myself. And it doesn't always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like constantly being with people, always being busy, always having somewhere to go, always talking to someone, always looking for something outside yourself to shift how you feel inside. I had to become comfortable with silence, and then I had to become comfortable with what the silence revealed. That was much harder.

Because once the distractions were gone, I could no longer blame the noise for what I was feeling. I had to sit with it, understand it, and eventually decide what I was going to do about it. There were things I had been avoiding because I didn't want to feel them, and there were things I couldn't understand because I was never quiet enough to actually hear myself. I started realising that discomfort wasn't always something I needed to escape from. Sometimes it was showing me something I needed to pay attention to.

You can't keep running from something and expect yourself to understand it. At some point, I had to stop trying to immediately change how I felt and instead allow myself to actually feel it. Not everything needed to be fixed immediately. Some things just needed to be acknowledged first.

4. Questioning the Beliefs I Had About Myself

This was probably the deeper part of all of it. Changing behaviour is one thing. Changing the beliefs underneath the behaviour is another. I began questioning some of the stories I had carried about myself— what I thought I could do, what I thought I couldn't do, what I thought I deserved, what I thought I had to tolerate, what I thought I needed from other people, and what I thought my past meant about my future.

Some of those beliefs had been built from experience. Some had been reinforced by repetition. And some were simply assumptions I had made years ago and never stopped to examine. I realised that just because I had believed something about myself for a long time didn't necessarily mean it was true. Sometimes we make a decision about who we are at one point in our life and then continue living according to it long after we've changed.

And I started asking myself, Is this actually true? Am I really limited to this? That's it? Those questions became powerful for me because they opened up the possibility that maybe some of the things I had accepted as facts about myself were never facts to begin with. Maybe they were just old conclusions. And if they were old conclusions, then I was allowed to question them.

I didn't want to keep living according to things I had never consciously chosen. I wanted to know what was actually true about me, what I actually wanted, and what was actually possible for me.

5. Letting Go of the Person I Thought I Had to Remain

There was also a quieter kind of grief in all of this. I had to let go of the idea that I needed to remain the same person just because people were familiar with her. The old version of me wasn't worthless, and she wasn't a mistake. She was simply no longer the person I wanted to continue being.

I don't look back at who I was with hatred. I understand her differently now. She made decisions based on what she knew at the time, developed patterns for reasons, protected herself in ways that made sense to her, and found ways to cope with things she didn't know how to deal with yet. She got me here, and I am grateful for that version of me. But gratitude doesn't mean I have to remain her.

I can appreciate who I was without continuing to live as her. I think that distinction matters because growth doesn't have to mean rejecting everything about who you used to be. I don't need to hate the woman I was in order to become the woman I am now. I can understand her, have compassion for her, and still choose differently.

Becoming Meant Making Different Choices

Eventually, I realised that transformation isn't just about knowing what you want to become. It's about being willing to repeatedly choose what supports that version of you.

It meant saying no more often, becoming more selective, protecting my time, becoming comfortable with periods of solitude, choosing long-term alignment over short-term comfort, and accepting that some people might not understand my decisions.

It also meant allowing my life to become quieter in some ways so that it could become fuller in others. And I started understanding that letting go isn't always some dramatic act. Sometimes it's simply the decision to stop returning to something— a habit, a thought, a behaviour, a dynamic, or a version of yourself. You don't necessarily need to fight it. You just stop feeding it.

There doesn't always have to be a big ending. Sometimes you just stop participating. You stop giving it your attention. You stop making excuses for it. You stop going back to something you've already realised isn't good for where you're going.

I Couldn't Shrink to Fit the Old Version of My Life

There came a point where I realised I couldn't keep shrinking myself to make the old version of my life comfortable. I couldn't keep performing familiarity for people who expected the old me, and I couldn't keep returning to patterns simply because they were familiar. That didn't mean I had to reject everyone. It meant I had to stop rejecting myself and abandoning myself.

That was an important distinction for me. I could love people without living exactly as they lived. I could still care about people without needing their approval for every decision. I could remain open to relationships while still having boundaries. I could change without needing everyone to understand the change. And I could become more myself without becoming less loving.

I think sometimes we confuse being a good person with being endlessly available, endlessly understanding, endlessly accommodating. But becoming more intentional with my life taught me that having boundaries doesn't make me less loving. Saying no doesn't mean I care less. Choosing myself doesn't mean I'm choosing against everyone else.

Sometimes it just means I'm finally choosing myself too.

The Space That Letting Go Created

The strange thing about letting go is that at first, it can feel like loss. You notice what isn't there anymore. The habit. The distraction. The person. The environment. The dynamic. The version of yourself you were used to being. And for a while, that space can feel uncomfortable because you're not sure what is supposed to fill it.

But eventually, I realised that maybe it wasn't supposed to be filled immediately.

Maybe the space itself was the point.

Space to think. Space to learn. Space to build. Space to discover what actually matters to me. Space to develop new habits, standards and principles. Space to become more intentional about the life I want.

Looking back now, I realise that some of the biggest changes in my life didn't come from something new entering it. They came from something leaving. And that was when I started understanding that transformation isn't always addition. Sometimes it's subtraction.

Sometimes you have to remove what is no longer aligned before you can even recognise what is.

And perhaps the hardest part is that you don't always know what your life will look like after you let something go. You just know that you can no longer carry it with you.

That was the point I reached.

I didn't have everything figured out. I didn't know exactly who I was becoming. I still had questions. I still had things I was working through. But I knew who I could no longer afford to keep being.

And that was enough to keep moving.

Enough to stop going back.

Enough to choose differently.

Enough to make space.

Enough to become.

So I ask you—

What are you still holding on to that no longer belongs to the person you're becoming?

And what would happen if you finally gave yourself permission to let it go?

Vanesa

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