Body, Mind, and Heart Drain

"Memories are just a way of your mind dragging you to live clinging to the past.  As long as you are living in the past, especially revisiting traumatic times, you cannot enjoy the present.  The only way you c an deal with debilitating, painful, draining memories is for you to be aware and understand their futility

- @AVISiswanathan

So many cliches about letting go.  And, I have let go of so many things, I should have, I did not want to, I would have, and could have.  As I age, and age has its way with me, I realize I STILL have danged cling-ons. 

Long ago, I let some things, people, places go their way, and, yes, I struggled, with some, but, eventually, life helped me not miss them.  Some made me stronger for the going.  But, some things get stuck in my craw.  It is like holding skeletons and they have rotten down to the bone as I held on.  I am stubborn about some things.  It is like I want it all to be my way, not the highway. 

I have a strong sense of justice, a sense (I think) of what needs to be done to or by it/them.  I have a hard time letting others fail me.  I tend to believe in the good of others (the potential for good).  It is there that I tend to get stuck.  I spent years allowing them their own stuff, wishing them well, and walking away. 

I, as well, have struggled with feeling like I could have done more, done right, done better for/to them/it.  I can spend a great deal of energy and time trying to right things I feel like I should.  Most times, they/it did not deserve any of my extra time and energy.  It resolved nothing by letting go, it feels like because I carry those old bones, waiting for some kind of resurrection that is never coming.

At times, I have dug around and figured out why I could not let some things/them go?  It was like I was beating myself up with it/them.  I got used to having them drag me down.  Sometimes nightmares come and I waken and realize how deeply someone else/it has been allowed to dig in.  It is for me to dig them out and bury them/it.  They/It does not care that I am carrying my own mock supposition of who them/them are.  It is not even them/it.  I am lugging around a cloud of self-absorbed fantasy of what is present and now, and authentically, me.  It has nothing to do with them.  I have allowed abuse/abuser to continue on long after they are gone to dust.

By focusing away from myself, tucking the wants, needs, wishes and dishes of what I pretended was right or wrong with it/them, I did not have to seek within to find out what it was in me that I need to change.  In any relationship... we, so often, look outside of Self.  We blame others for the whole of a bad situation.  When, really, we can compassionately look within and realize our own part in it all.  It is scary to look at our dark side, especially, when we feel/were the victim and someone/something else WAS out of bounds.  The problem is, if we continue to see Self as the victim of something/so0meone, we may, me included, remain a victim to it.  It takes two to tangle.  Always.  It just looking outward to find the reasons is never the whole truth of the matter.

Sometimes we just cannot figure out a reason why there has been a problem with it/them.  Our sense of what is just and right is insulted.  The problem is, if we are looking outside for answers, we miss it completely and it does not get resolved.  The answers are within.  We know the answers, most times, bu5t refuse to acknowledge it.

Letting go is an emotional thing.  In some relationships, we become so enmeshed that we cannot figure out the "I" within the "WE"/"IT".  Rationale is more than emotional.  Sometimes our soul just cannot accept when things need to be let go.  It can make us angry, bitter, and/or closed.  To do this is to shut yourself off from feeling deep emotional ties.  While we are hanging on to dead things, we may miss the living.

I realize that I still have so much work to do.  Sometimes eternal hope is a crazy thing to have.  I suppose the death of the dearest soul I ever knew helped me understand that sometimes we walk on alone.  Have one daughter shut the door on me due to her mental issues, and having another shut her own door due to addictions, can really do a number, and did do a number on me.  But, losing someone to death;  well, there were no second chances, no being worthy, no being good enough, could ever bring him back.  Sometimes you have to let things die. 

Today I am going to begin work on simply letting things be.  I drain myself of those heavy things that have weighed on me.  When I meet my Creator, I want to be free of hangers-on that I have not drained from my psyche.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.21/18