Forget it, says the mind – but the heart remains

The eternal struggle between heart and mind

Sometimes I wish my mind were right. It tells me that things will get easier eventually. That I just need to analyze enough, write enough, understand enough—and then everything will fall into place. It tells me I could keep control if I just looked closely enough.

But my heart doesn't follow those rules. It knows no time, no reason, and no "enough is enough." It simply keeps feeling. And maybe that is exactly what is so damn difficult about being human.

Feeling without a way out

I have found countless words in my life. I have written stories, interpreted dreams, searched for patterns, and tried to understand what perhaps cannot be fully understood. And yet I keep stumbling over myself.

It is almost cruel: this intense feeling that penetrates to the bone—and at the same time the realization that feelings alone change nothing. Sometimes I ask myself: Am I losing myself in analysis? Am I really looking for clarity, or is it just a sophisticated form of control? Do I write a thousand words because they actually help me move forward—or because for a moment I don't have to bear that there is no answer to some questions?

Because eventually, only the feeling remains. Without explanation. Without a solution. Without a guarantee that it will ever lead anywhere.

And then comes that one question you can no longer hide from: What do I do with something my heart refuses to let go of, while my life has long since moved on?

When insight changes nothing

Maybe this is the truest truth: I have lived in this contradiction for a long time. My head said: Stop. Forget it. Move on. My heart replied: But it means something to me. And for a long time, I believed that one of these two voices would eventually have to win.

So I kept searching. For answers, for meaning, for that one missing piece that would suddenly explain everything. In words and in silence. In what happened, and just as much in what did not happen. Maybe I wanted proof that my heart had been right. Maybe I wanted to finally have proof of the opposite, so I could have peace.

Today I know: I no longer need either of them.

I can have felt something deeply without having to deduce where it was supposed to lead. I can have experienced an encounter as life-changing without knowing what meaning it had for another person. And I can love without making my life dependent on whether this love ever takes the form I once imagined.

One does not make the other untrue.

But it no longer holds me back either.

I no longer look back

Maybe that is the greatest change: I no longer look back to see if something is finally moving behind me.

I have tried to understand what is out of my hands for long enough. I have looked behind walls, interpreted silence, hoped, doubted, and asked myself if I still had to do something. But eventually, there comes a point where even the deepest feeling can no longer be a reason to keep your own life on hold.

I cannot save anyone. Convince anyone. Wake anyone up with a kiss. I cannot fight someone else's battles, and I cannot open a door from my side if it remains locked on the other.

That hurts. Maybe a part of it will always hurt.

But that does not mean I have to stay behind.

What truly wants me will find its way to me. What belongs to me does not need me to keep looking back to reach me.

In the past, I might have seen in this the hope that something specific must happen. Today, it means something different to me: trust. Trust that I am not missing anything just because I am moving on.

Because if something truly wants to find its place in my life, it will reach me not just in thoughts, memories, or possibilities.

It will meet me in real life.

What remains

Some feelings do not disappear on command. Some people leave traces that we cannot simply erase. And maybe we don't have to.

But a trace is not a place where you have to stay forever.

I can acknowledge what was. I can know how deep it went and how much it changed me. But I no longer have to turn around to check if the past might still become my future.

My head no longer has to force my heart to forget. And my heart no longer has to prove to me that its feelings will lead somewhere. It can simply be there—as part of my story, not as a condition for my future.

My task is me. My life. My decisions. The people who are actually in it. The love that is here today. And all that lies before me and has no story yet.

Maybe that is exactly the freedom I have been searching for for so long:

I do not have to forget to move on.

What wants me can come. What belongs to me will find its way.

I am going my way.

Séverine 💫