When the time comes, nothing in you will comprehend how it will be possible to let go. To end the embrace you'll suddenly feel like you've been hurtling towards in meteoric fashion for eighteen quick, long years.

And yet even before enveloping her, you'll be conscious your brand new sworn enemy, the clock, will tick too absurdly quickly during this last cradle. Awareness sets in that not only must you somehow peel yourself off part of your own heart, you'll also have to leave her there. Walk away. Leave the building. Get in the car. And drive home. Where she won't be when you get there. No portion of you will understand how you will actually be able to do any of this.

In a whirlwind matter of seconds, you'll conduct an entire silent debate with yourself in which you'll argue and hiss, swear and plead. You'll lobby and try to explain. You'll attempt to persuade and manipulate. You'll insist there's no way, just none at all that you can quit holding on for dear life to the love of yours. Lucky for you, a millennia-old know-how born of eternal knowledge and ancient wisdom will waft in from afar, seep in under the door frames, flow in through cracks in the window sills and swirl around you in precision timing.

In miserly moments, resignation will set in and morph you into a marionette no longer in control of your own limbs. Taking over, the invisible strings will lift your head up off the comfort of her shoulder. They'll pull one hand back and away and then the other. Drop both arms at your sides. And force one foot in front of the other until you're out the door.

During this melee in your mind, you will have spoken actual words to her. You won't remember what they were. You'll just pray they were the ones she needed to hear, the ones you needed to say. Vapory dregs of certainty will allow you to be somewhat sure you mentioned love, confidence, hope. Of her, in her, for her. But you won't have a definitive recollection of how you ordered your words. Whether they were intelligible. If they found their way free of your lips before your voice broke or after you fixed it.

All you'll remember later is that you did it. You somehow stopped hugging half your heart. You ceased trying to prime her with enough fierce love and steadfast belief in her to last the length she needs them to. And that she did it, too. She let go. Because she was ready to. Preferable terms you'll be at once grateful for and envious of.

You'll recall you let go of each other and not much more than that. It will all be a blur. A big, beautiful, bountiful blur. For you'll realize that even so the letting go, a taught and trustworthy tether remains. Mercifully connecting the two of you though you're no longer near. The very same eternal knowledge and ancient wisdom that helped you to let go were dually occupied that day, busily weaving the ties that bind around you both. You just won't have noticed at the time.

Later though, you'll note the phenomenal strength of that tether each time you think of her. Every time you're blessed by a memory of her or see her likeness in a photo. Each time you read her words in a text or anticipate your next embrace. Every time her name is mentioned or you walk into her room. And inexplicably, this will be gift enough to get you and what's left of your heart through.

Related video: