The Non-Participation In the Emotional Economy That Keeps Us Bound
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
We are done
trading our nervous systems
for a sense of belonging.
Done investing emotion
where there is no return
but depletion.
There is an economy
that survives on our reaction—
on our guilt,
our overfunctioning,
our willingness to carry
what was never ours.
We have been
excellent contributors.
We paid in explanation.
In patience we did not feel.
In responsibility misplaced
and rehearsed until it sounded moral.
But participation was never compulsory.
We were simply taught
it was.
Letting go is not abandonment.
It is discernment.
It is the quiet recognition
that not everything urgent
is ours to tend.
That not every emotion
requires our labour.
That not every wound
becomes holy
because we keep touching it.
We release the compulsion
to manage outcomes
that do not belong to us.
The reflex to soothe
what refuses healing.
The fantasy that our suffering
is evidence of love.
This is not apathy.
It is precision.
We withdraw our energy
from arguments that feed on it,
from dynamics that collapse
without our participation,
from the old belief
that endurance is virtue
and exhaustion is proof.
We stop paying
into systems that thrive
on our self-erasure.
What falls away
was never stable.
What dissolves
was never sustainable.
We learn this slowly:
peace does not need to be defended.
Truth does not require force.
And responsibility—
real responsibility—
is clean, contained,
and never leaves us hollow.
We release
without bitterness.
Without ceremony.
Not because we are defeated,
but because we are no longer available
for transactions that cost us ourselves.
This is the reclamation.
The moment we notice
how much life returns
when we stop managing
what was never ours to hold.
We do not disengage from love.
We disengage from bondage.
And in that refusal—
that calm, irrevocable no—
something astonishing happens:
the world grows quieter,
the body grows lighter,
and life—
unburdened—
steps forward
to meet us
as it always intended to.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
