Let slip.

What a challenge to accept, but what a bigger challenge to let go. It's not easy to let slip after embracing, to let crumble after building up, to open the fist when you've clenched it tightly long enough. I find that while you so hardly ask for pain to be taken away, you so easily find yourself still clinging to it. Because it's defined you all these years. Because it's made you stronger. Because it allows you to look into the future and ask, What could be worse? Because it's what you turn to when you feel you need a right to be angry. Because it justifies your inability to forgive. To forget. To let go of every little thing that your little pain has grown into.

But where is the freedom you claim?