by Chip (35), December 2024.

Chip (35) shares a deeply personal and beautifully vulnerable reflection on relationships, heartbreak, and the journey of letting go. In this powerful blog, he explores his ongoing process of self-discovery, confronting fears, and embracing the unknown as he looks toward 2025.

What a year 2024 has been…

I’ve come to call it the year of heartbreak.

This year, I put myself out there in search of companionship—a journey toward love, commitment, and parenthood. A journey of togetherness, where two people build a future, sharing their love with small, beautiful souls whose lives have been turned upside down.

My desire for companionship has always stemmed from a deep fear of not being enough. Not being strong enough. Not being wealthy enough. Not knowing when enough is truly enough.

So I sought that companionship.

But it wasn’t found.

As a gay man, growing up came with its challenges. I spent most of my life in a country that didn’t embrace queer people, which taught me to control every aspect of my life to hide my “difference.” I was careful about how I acted, avoided drinking, and kept parts of myself hidden from even the people closest to me.

What a sad way to live—when the people who are supposed to know you best don’t truly know who you are.

That need for control stayed with me into adulthood. It became my survival instinct, keeping people at a distance, refusing to open up, to be vulnerable, to be myself.

I’ve been lucky to find a community that has helped me along the way. I can’t say I’m fully healed, but they give me small moments of reprieve—times when I feel I can catch my breath and keep my head above water before I dive back under.

Still, something is pulling me down. Maybe it’s my lack of trust that my worth is inherent, that I am enough just by existing. Or maybe it’s the anxiety of not being a good enough father to my future children.

Music has been a source of solace for me. I immerse myself in the lyrics, finding meaning in the words and the emotions they carry. One of my most played songs of 2024 on Apple Music is “All the Troubled Hearts” by Hiatus and Daudi Matsiko. The song resonates with both sadness and hope. I find myself whispering the lyrics, “I’m gonna make it up to you somehow,” as if I’m telling my future self that I’ll do the work—that I’ll take better care of myself.

But what if I already did?

What if everything I did was all I could do? What if past Chip didn’t know better, but gave everything he had?

This newfound compassion for my past self is something I’ve only recently discovered, at 35 years old. And while I wish I’d found it sooner, I’m grateful it happened when it did.

“Life will find a way.” I tell myself this over and over. Surprisingly, even after all the pain and heartbreak, I still want to continue. I still want to see myself holding my future children in my arms, showering them with love. I want to explore both the highest of mountains and the lowest of valleys. I want to strip away all the layers and just be myself.

And so, here is where my relationship with control must end. You’ve kept me alive until now, for which I am forever grateful. But it’s time to admit that this relationship is no longer serving me. I can’t truly feel free until I let go.

And I am afraid.

I am terrified of letting go of the control that has kept me safe for so long.

I recently spoke with a friend who lost a parent to cancer. They taught me a powerful lesson: We think we have control, but true healing comes when we realize we never had it to begin with.

Life will continue as it’s meant to, and there’s little I can do to change its course. The grief of mourning the life I thought I’d have might never fully fade. But maybe there’s peace in trusting that life will take me exactly where I need to be—without my constant need to steer it.

My eyes are tired from always being alert, from keeping watch over the road. Maybe it’s time to take a break, to breathe in a new sense of freedom—one that isn’t tied to a pursuit of “success,” whatever that may mean for me.

I think I’m ready. Ready to let go.

It’s time to close my eyes and jump.

Into the unknown.