dog with a bone..

have you ever wondered why a dog holds a bone tightly even when there's food sitting right beside it? even when you offer the dog something much better than the bone, it still holds on to the bone like it's a huge inheritance.

i’ve been noticing this behaviour from my pug ace, for the past couple of weeks. ace has a thing he does whenever he gets a bone. he would take the bone around, find a comfortable spot chew on it for long, leave it somewhere, come for it later and still continue to chew.

the funny thing is, there could be food sitting right beside him but he still won't budge. you could give him something much better and it'll probably stall him for a while, but the moment you reach for the bone, he'll pounce on you like he's protecting his inheritance.

i’ve watched him do this many times, more than i can even count and i eventually started to wonder….why? i just wanted to understand what was going on inside his tiny little head because sometimes, it really doesn't look like he wants the bone…he just wants to know that the bone is actually where he left it.

he'll leave it untouched for a while, walk around, come back and check on it, then leave again as if knowing he still has it is enough.

and then i realized, maybe humans aren't that different. for humans, bone is a metaphor for things we hold onto. we hold onto things so tightly and firmly that we forget to figure out whether we actually still want them.

we keep old messages of people who once loved us, we replay every intimate moment we had with them in our heads and we revisit every old conversations trying to figure out what could have happened if we had done things differently.

i think one of the hardest part of holding onto something is that that particular thing isn't completely bad.

even though they hurt you, you still remember the version of yourself when things were smooth, you still remember the late night conversations and the good time you both spent when you were around each other and knowing that the relationship is no longer good definitely doesn't magically erase any of that.

the memories don't become fake just because the ending was painful and maybe that's something we need to start accepting. not everything that ends was a mistake….somethings are simply not meant to last forever.

sometimes, a person can become an important part of your life without being someone who is supposed to remain in it.

but then, there's another thing we hold onto—potential or rather, expectations. i think we fall in love with potential and expectations more often than we realise.

we see the good in people and what they're capable of. we remember the version of them that was kind and then, we start building an entire future around those moments.

and sometimes, that's the bone. not the person but the possibility of the person. it can be incredibly difficult to let go of a future you spent so much time imagining.

because when you finally walk away, you're not only grieving what you had, you're grieving what you thought you were going to have.

there's also something strangely comforting about familiarity. even when something isn't good for us, at least we know it. we know what to expect, the arguments, silence, apologies and how the cycle works.

starting again means entering a world where we don't know what happens next and sometimes, the pain we've become familiar with feels safer than the happiness we're not sure exists.

that's why people sometimes stay in situations they know are hurting them. sometimes they're simply terrified of discovering what life looks like without the thing they've spent so long holding onto.

and then there's the time we've invested, this one is particularly cruel because after giving something years of our life, walking away can feel like admitting that those years were wasted.

you think about everything you gave and the times you stayed when you could have left and you wonder,

“if i leave now, what was all of that for?” but maybe that's the wrong question.

a chapter doesn't become meaningless simply because you eventually turned the page and i think that's something we forget. we assume that if something doesn't last, then it wasn't worth having.

but that's not how life works. some people stay for years, some stay for months, some stay for a few weeks and somehow leave fingerprints on your entire life…duration isn't always a measurement of meaning and maybe letting go isn't about deciding that something was worthless.

you can be grateful for something and still outgrow it, those things can exist together.

and i think we're afraid that if we let go, we're saying, "i don't care anymore." but that's not necessarily true.

sometimes letting go is saying,

"i care and that's exactly why I don't want to keep turning this into something it was never meant to be."

maybe that's what ace has been teaching me without even knowing it. he doesn't always need the bone, sometimes he just needs to know it's there and maybe we do that too. we don't always want someone back, sometimes we just want to know that the possibility still exists.

that if we ever changed our minds, the door wouldn't be completely closed, that maybe things could still return to the way they were. but keeping a door open forever can become its own kind of prison because you can spend so much time looking at the door that you forget there's an entire world behind you.

and eventually, you have to ask yourself something uncomfortable: what if you're not holding onto this because you still want it? what if you're holding onto it because you're afraid to find out who you are without it?

i think that's where the real work begins. the work doesn't begin when you delete their number, or block them or stop checking on them or when you finally say “i'm over it”

it begins when you can look at the thing you have been carrying and honestly ask:

“do I still want this, or am I just used to having it?

because there is a difference, a very big one at that and maybe that's the difference between holding on and being held hostage by what you're holding.

sometimes, you have to put the bone down because you finally realised that you deserve to have both hands free to reach for something new and hold someone who actually holds you back.

and maybe that's the hardest part, you might never completely forget, of course there may always be a little part of you that wonders what would have happened if things had been different.

but you don't have to carry every question with you because some questions can remain unanswered. some memories can remain beautiful without becoming invitations to return.

and some bones.…..just need to be left where they are. the funny thing is, i don't think ace knows any of this. he's probably somewhere right now looking for his bone.

and if I take it away, he'll probably look at me like i've committed a personal betrayal. but maybe that's okay. not everything needs to be understood immediately. sometimes we just need to notice what we're carrying, how heavy it has become and how long we've been carrying it.

and then, when we're finally ready...put it down because sometimes the thing you've been afraid to lose...is the exact thing that's been keeping your hands full.