Letting Go

I came across this in the most unlikely place but it was exactly what I needed to hear.

LETTING GO TAKES LOVE

To let go does not mean to stop caring,
it means I can't do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off,
it's the realization I can't control another.
To let go is not to enable,
but allow learning from natural consequences.
To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means
the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try to change or blame another,
it's to make the most of myself.
To let go is not to care for,
but to care about.
To let go is not to fix,
but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their destinies.
To let go is not to be protective,
it's to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny,
but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
To let go is not to criticize or regulate anybody,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.

To let go is to fear less and love more

Cloudy

It is gray and cloudy today for the first time in a very long time. It is oddly comforting to me, the dark brooding sky that rumbles occasionally letting go and drops spill from above. It seems to mirror the mood I have harbored all summer long. Despite the blue skies and sunshine my petulant mood just seems to cloud everything to a dull overcast finish.

I have been so naive - What I know now is happiness is NOT ALWAYS simply a choice - or at least there are circumstance where choosing happiness is just not as simple as it is stated. Sometimes choosing happiness is as difficult as fighting against a current dragging you the other way. Sometimes it is just too much. Too much for one heart to hold. And I see why people give up, become still and stop fighting.

Too much loss, too much to bear, that I wonder how I can continue like this. Yet everyday I do, somehow, manage to get up and put one foot in front of the other. Going through the motions, but really just sleepwalking through life. I even manage to sometimes distract myself just long enough to enjoy the moments, but there lurking in the background is the pull tugging me back, reminding me that this year summer just didn't hold the same joy it normally does.

I don't know that it has ever been this bad. I don't know if my compulsion to run has EVER been this strong. Do you ever just wish for a do over? I just want to start all over. Like OK I see how much I've fucked this up can I just select to restart the game? I know it isn't right to throw the baby out with the bath water, but that is exactly what feels so attractive. Just to walk away from everything.

Time heals all wounds? I'm not so sure, I think time tends to allow our minds to forget. And forget we do until the next time.

Waking up

"Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me......

....Whatever it was that had happened.... it had woken me up."

New Moon ~ Stephenie Meyer

Eventually Everyone Leaves

It seemed so normal sitting in the shade sipping iced tea. I largely just enjoyed the time in the shade on a perfect summer day. For a brief moment I allowed my mind to process how right this all seemed and agreed it felt good not to be so distant and brooding. To allow her in. It didn't really occur to me to remember all of the times she's hurt me and let me down. It's funny, just like anything that is painful, in order to protect ourself from it we forget just how much it hurts.

Of course if I let myself, I could have done what I normally do and just closed down. Kept her at a distance and not let her in. Protecting my heart from the next time she leaves. But the truth is whether I kept myself closed or not, it hurts all the same when she disappears. And she did. Less than a week later, one day, life was just too much and she did what she always does which is to shut off the outside world until she deemed it safe for her again. And there I was left to take care of canceling our plans and rearranging life - left to wait it out until the storm in her world passed.

I am struggling with this lately as I have also just watched two of my very best friends both leave, and a third teetering on the brink of going away. Most of this is geographical, but also emotionally I've had to say good bye for reasons beyond just a change in their physical location.

This got me thinking about a lot of the relationships I have had in my life over the years: they have all ended. I can't think of one relationship that I have maintained over the course of my life. At one point or another, sometimes for good reasons, and sometimes it has been just circumstantial, but they have all gone away. And unlike my Mother who pops back in after weeks on no contact, just as if nothing is or has been wrong, people who go away, tend to stay away.

It has not gone unnoticed by me that there is something here that I must need to learn. Beyond why it seems I can't maintain lifetime relationships, and that like shoes they just seem to wear out or go out of fashion and get replaced. No, more like how to not be like my Mother and go away when life is hard. How to gracefully deal with difficulties without shutting out the world. But when you learn to be scared that eventually everyone leaves... how do you trust and not hold everyone at arms length?

Good-Bye

I keep trying to think of a good reason to do anything other than what was requested. As if somehow I could choose to have this all be different. The truth is the time for making another choice was long ago and I'm so sorry..... I leapt in with reckless abandon one too many times, having too much trust in what is meant to be will be, and now the consequence is just what it is. I'm not sorry I made the choices I made, just sorry that the consequences are what they are. It is sad, but I believe it is right to just let go. I will miss you but I'm not sure my selfish desire to keep you as my friend supersedes his wish to have me just go away.

I wish it were different in so many ways....

Healing

I got out a saucepan to heat water for tea - I hadn't found the kettle yet; I suppose it was in one of the few kitchen boxes I had yet to empty. I'd drink a mug of Sleepytime, and then, when I was sure I could no longer keep my eyes open, I'd go upstairs to lie down. In the morning, I could cross off another day. I put my hands to my lower back, stretched, allowed myself an oh God. "Healing hurts," someone at John's service had told me. "But hurting heals."

-excerpt from The Year of Pleasure by Elizabeth Berg

Are You Happy?

If only I could ask you this and if you would give me a straight answer.