Why can't I let go?
Because you are not holding on to the person or the outcome. You are holding on to who you were with it — and to the version of the future that ended when it did.
How each tradition describes this pattern
Western psychology
Rumination and complicated grief
Grief becomes complicated when the loss also removes an identity or an assumed future. The mind returns to it not from weakness but because it is still trying to complete something. Rumination is that incompletion running on a loop: a search for a resolution the situation cannot supply.
Contemplative traditions
Raga
Raga is named as one of the five root afflictions — the pull toward what once produced pleasure, persisting long after the object is gone. The tradition is precise that the suffering is not caused by the thing itself but by the grasping, which is why letting go is described as an internal act rather than an external one.
Where the two meet
What each account misses alone.
Western language locates the pain in the loss; contemplative language locates it in the grip. Neither is complete alone. Grief work without an understanding of grasping can rehearse the loss indefinitely. Non-attachment taught without grief becomes suppression wearing a spiritual vocabulary.
The Atlas explains the pattern. A Soul Mirror finds yours.
Reading about a pattern and seeing your own are different events. A Soul Mirror maps your specific architecture from your birth details and your own answers, and arrives within 24 hours.