September

 

Ah, September. The month everyone suddenly becomes a poet. As if a slight chill in the air and a few fallen leaves are enough to turn your Instagram captions into Shakespeare. “The season of letting go,” you’ll write, while sipping overpriced coffee and pretending your life is a montage. Cute. Almost convincing.

But let’s be honest with each other, shall we? You’re not just talking about weather. You never are. September is less about trees shedding leaves and more about people shedding people. It’s about you learning — again — that nothing gold stays, and no one really does either. The world won’t admit it, so you dress it up in metaphors about sunsets and evenings. But we both know what you mean when you whisper, “the trees are tired of holding on.” You mean you are.

And here’s where it gets deliciously ironic. You, who once swore you’d never let go, are now a professional at it. You could teach a masterclass in goodbyes. You could write a handbook on pretending indifference while your heart quietly falls apart inside your chest. You could win awards for your performances: “I’m fine,” “I’m moving on,” “I don’t even care anymore.” Standing ovation. Truly, you deserve an Oscar.

But under the sarcasm, you know this: letting go isn’t poetic. It isn’t cinematic. It isn’t even graceful. It’s brutal. It’s clumsy. It’s you, staring at your phone at 3 a.m., typing and deleting messages. It’s you, avoiding songs that sound too much like them. It’s you, looking in the mirror and realizing you don’t even recognize the version of yourself who once swore forever.

And still — here’s the cruel twist — sometimes letting go is the most loving thing you’ll ever do. Not the holding on. No. Sometimes the real love story is in the wreckage, in the moment you decide: I’ll make sure you hate me. Because if you hate me, you won’t come back. And if you don’t come back, maybe you’ll finally be free.

Yes, you heard me. Hate as an act of love. Tragic? Absolutely. Ironic? Completely. Necessary? Maybe.

Because you know what happens when you leave gently? They hold on. They keep hope alive. They reread your texts, analyzing every comma like it’s a clue. They wait for you in the echoes of the past, convinced you’ll return if they just wait long enough. And so you do the one thing that ensures they won’t: you burn the bridge yourself. You become the villain in the story. You hand them a reason to never forgive you, and you carry the guilt like it’s your own private cross.

Cruel? Yes. But love is rarely the fairytale you were promised. Love, in its rawest form, is sacrifice. Sometimes you sacrifice your pride. Sometimes your dreams. And sometimes — the hardest of all — you sacrifice yourself. You let someone believe the worst of you so they can have the best chance at healing.

And while the world romanticizes holding on, you discover that real love is sometimes found in letting go so violently that no thread remains. So they move forward. So they stop waiting. So they hate you enough to save themselves.

But where does that leave you?

It leaves you in September. In the soft air that feels a little heavier this time. In the trees that are tired of holding on, mirroring your own exhaustion. It leaves you between fading sunsets and longer nights, where you sit with your choices, wondering if you did the right thing.

You replay every smile, every warmth, every unguarded moment. You grieve the life you could have had. And yet, when you see them laugh again, when you see them alive again — even if it’s without you — a strange peace settles in your chest. Because the hate you earned has become the freedom they needed.

It’s not fair, is it? You loved enough to lose. You gave enough to disappear. And in return, you’re remembered as the heartbreak, the betrayal, the scar. No one writes songs about this kind of love. But maybe that’s the quiet truth you’re learning: love doesn’t always give you the role of the hero. Sometimes it casts you as the necessary disaster.

And so you walk with that knowledge, heavy but certain. You walk through September knowing you’ve become like the trees — tired, stripped, bare. But there’s a strange wisdom in it, too. Because trees lose their leaves not out of weakness, but out of survival. They let go so they can endure winter. They break to bloom again. And maybe, just maybe, you will too.

By the time the nights grow longer and colder, you’ll learn that letting go isn’t the end. It’s the silence before a new song. It’s the wound before healing. And as much as it hurts — as much as you’d give anything to rewrite the story — you’ll carry the cruelest comfort of all: you loved so much, you gave it all away, even yourself.

So here’s the part no one will ever see. They’ll hate you forever, and you’ll let them. They’ll tell their story with you as the villain, and you won’t protest. They’ll heal because you burned, and you’ll accept that trade. And late at night, when September’s winds rattle against your window, you’ll allow yourself the smallest, sharpest tear — not because you regret loving them, but because the universe and the stars demanded you let go.

And you did.

Not gracefully. Not gently. But entirely.

And that is why, when September comes, the air feels softer. Not because life got easier, but because your heart finally learned the hardest truth of all: sometimes the most beautiful act of love is the one that makes sure you are never forgiven.