— E S SAY · JUNE 2026 —
Let It Be. I Let You Go
On a sofa that had to go, a soul that chose to rest,
and the emptiness that turns out to be necessary.
You have a sofa. A beloved sofa. A sofa that has filled your family room for years. You cannot remember what life was like before that sofa arrived. The floral pattern on its fabric, its position in the family room, the way the other furniture and accessories were arranged around it. The memories of everyone who had ever sat there, all the conversations and laughter that had filled that room.
Then one day, you notice a smell coming from the sofa. At first, the smell is faint, and you wonder whether something is wrong with your nose. But day by day, the smell grows stronger. You try everything to get rid of it. You buy sofa cleaner. You sprinkle baking soda over it and vacuum it again and again. Night after night, you open Google, searching for tips on how to remove a strong smell from fabric upholstery. You ask yourself what you did to make this sofa become the source of such an unpleasant smell.
What did you do wrong?
Nothing works. Vinegar and water manage to cover the smell for a few days, but slowly, the disturbing smell returns. At the height of summer, it becomes even more piercing. You start wearing a mask whenever you have to be at home. You begin limiting visits from friends and relatives. You become defensive when you have to defend the sofa, or you pretend not to hear people’s comments. You light scented candles and spray perfume before receiving guests.
Then winter comes. The temperature drops to zero. The freezing air, combined with your blocked nose, makes the smell fade. You begin convincing yourself that the smell has passed. Everything will go back to the way it used to be. Your heart begins to calm down, even though every morning when you wake up, you take a long breath, half “hoping” the smell will return. Then winter begins to pass. Spring arrives, and like an old friend, the smell returns and floats once more in the air.
Deep inside, you know how ridiculous this situation is. But you cannot let go of the hope that maybe, surely, someday, this sofa will no longer smell. This sofa will once again become the sofa that colours your life with the beauty of its pattern and the softness of its cushions. And the life you had before the smell appeared will be yours to hold again.
And then, several months, several years, or perhaps several decades later, while washing dishes or folding clothes, still wearing the mask that you have dabbed with eucalyptus oil to cover your nose, you freeze. Something happens in your mind. A clarity. Like a view that had been blocked by fog, and suddenly the fog lifts, revealing something you had actually known for years. You look at the sofa across the room and you feel it in your soul.
I am done. This sofa has to go.
There is no blind rage. No shouted curses. No burst of triumphant laughter. No conversation you try to seek out. Only certainty in silence. I am done with you.
But this is not about a sofa. This is about the people we let go. The ones our exhausted souls finally decide to release. I let you go.
This is about a friend who let go of her mother from her life. After forty-four years of emotional wreckage. A grown woman, trembling every time she was about to visit her parents’ house. Her body remembered. Her nervous system stored it. The memory of her — a married adult woman — being shouted at and cursed by her mother in front of the entire extended family and her own children.
This is about someone important in my life who called me and said, “I was driving home from work earlier, and suddenly I nodded and said, this marriage has to end. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but I let him go.” There was no bitterness. No anger. A final, flat tone.
That night, she called me again. “I can finally sincerely pray that he succeeds in life. Be happy without me.”
You decide that the sofa has to go, even before you know how to carry it out of the house, who will help you, or how the carcass of that sofa will be taken to the dump. You do not have the mechanism. You do not yet have the strategy. You do not have a replacement. You have only decided that the sofa has to go.
Then the next problem appears. This sofa is an inheritance from your great-grandfather. Suddenly, everyone hears the news. Everyone judges you. Only one cousin sympathises with you, but even she keeps her distance. Family gatherings will become the awkward moment of the year. Suddenly, everyone starts sharing sweet stories about their experiences with that sofa in Grandfather’s old house. The sofa that accompanied their childhood.
You grieve. You are not happy. But the decision to get rid of the sofa is not really a logical decision. It is not a decision you made after filling out a pros-and-cons table. It is a decision you made because keeping it will make you lose one thing you can’t afford to lose. Your sanity.
The day comes when you throw the sofa away. You watch as the two men you hired struggle to manoeuvre it out of the house. The sofa does not make its removal easy. One of the men stops and adjusts the mask covering his nose. “Damn, Ma’am, it stinks.” Then they ask for an extra fee because now they will have to clean their truck after transporting the sofa. This sofa now costs you more than you expected. But the show must go on.
That night, while eating your dinner at the kitchen table, you sit silently, staring at the family room that is now empty. There is no sofa there. There is no joy there. There is no cry of victory. Only emptiness. And a thought passes through your mind: if this decision was right, why don’t I feel happy? Why don’t I feel like I won? I feel tired. I feel empty. I feel… defeated.
Time passes, and the family room remains empty. Empty of the sofa. Empty of laughter and easy conversation. Every time you pass that family room, a question crosses your mind: will I ever find a replacement sofa? Will this family room ever feel warm again with the laughter of cousins? Have I made a mistake?
You sit alone in the dim family room, scrolling through your phone. You stare at WhatsApp groups you have ignored for years. You have a friendship group that used to meet every Saturday night for dinner, taking turns at each other’s houses. Two years ago, you started making excuses so those dinners would not be held at your house. Then guilt began to disturb you, and slowly, you started declining invitations to dinners at your friends’ homes. The WhatsApp group still exists, but it is inactive. You suspect your friends have created a new group without including you.
An aunt comes to visit. Looking at the family room, she comments, “Why didn’t you just put the sofa in the garage? That way you wouldn’t have been disturbed by the smell, and Grandfather and the family wouldn’t have been divided just because you threw away the sofa.”
You begin questioning again whether you made the right decision. Did I act too hastily in deciding to throw the sofa away? Later, you will remember that suggestion and think: if that sofa was so important to Auntie, why didn’t she offer to take it herself? Why didn’t the extended family offer to help find a professional sofa cleaner and help pay for it, if keeping the sofa really mattered so much to them?
Then one day, you walk around a corner at the edge of the city, and your nose catches a very familiar smell. The smell of that rotten sofa. Your body tenses. Your brain freezes. Something small inside your heart writhes in panic. Your body, now free from that smell, is reminded of what it was like to live with it. Reminded of the mask with drops of eucalyptus oil. Reminded of every refusal when friends wanted to visit. Reminded of the tension you felt whenever you heard someone comment on the smell.
Reminded of night after night opening Google, searching for the answer to the question: what did I do wrong?
That corner reminds you of the sofa in your life, the one that made you wake at three in the morning with your chest heavy, as if a crocodile were sitting on it, your breath racing like a marathon runner.
That corner reminds you of the moment you merely glimpsed your mother sending a YouTube video in the family group, and that was enough to make you delete not just the message, but uninstall WhatsApp entirely.
After letting go of that sofa, it is time for you to face the consequences of your decision. Your aunt’s criticism and sarcasm. The additional cost of disposing of the sofa. Gathering the courage to contact your group of friends who have drifted away from you. Receiving rejection for that effort. Hearing stories that your mother has been speaking badly about you at a family gathering.
And above all, the tiredness and defeat of a battle fought for years to keep this sofa, only for it to end in loss. I cannot keep you in my life. I have to lose you. Forever. You do not come out of this struggle as a champion. You simply do what your mind finally agrees to do — something your body and heart had already known for a very long time. You feel empty because even though that sofa truly stank, it had filled your life for years. And just like the family room that is now empty, the heart left behind by that relationship also becomes empty.
But that emptiness is necessary. That grief is necessary. That feeling of defeat is necessary. You cannot fill your heart and your life with other people or other experiences while that stinking sofa is still sitting in the family room.
There is no need to rush to find a replacement sofa.
Maybe you will find one.
Maybe not.
Maybe your family room will only be filled with a cold mat or a hard bamboo chair. You will sit there with a numb backside and an aching back.
But you will do all of that without a mask dabbed with eucalyptus oil.