Bye bye bye

from Daily Om

We often hold on to things, feelings, and relationships out of habit or, many times, out of fear of being without. For so much of learning to let go is about learning to trust. We have to be able to trust that, indeed, new branches will grow, that there is a new skin under the old one. And yet, to the degree that we are willing to let go, we are able to receive. When we stop holding on and clinging to anything, we realize we have everything.


I have trouble letting go. Of things, people, emotions. My nature is to cling, save, hoard, capture. I want them there, all of them, whatever them it is, to prove to myself that I am worthy. One is hardly ever enough, and when it is, it seems that to let go is to give away a part of myself, or a part of how I want to be reflected. I’m stubborn, and I know I have trouble seeing what’s right in front of me, often in black and white, words that should be easy to decipher but become riddles the more I look at them. “I don’t want you” becomes “Maybe I would want you if only you did X, Y, Z and then started the alphabet all over again.” That belligerent, gotta-have-it instinct kicks in for me that makes me forget all the reasons I should walk away, why I truly need to let go, and makes it seem all backwards. There are so many “but”s and all of it makes me cry. I see in the quote above what K. was trying to tell me, about Neitsche, about trust, about living in the present. I am almost there, at least most of the time. Everything doesn’t have to remind me of him, though he is there, on CNN, in my inbox, in my Spanish word of the day. In ways I don’t even realize. Time does make it easier, or at least dulls the pain. I go home and curl up amidst the blankets and computer and books and light, trying to stay warm, leaving the pajamas I got in LA, the ones that will always remind me of his bed, on the floor. I want to wear them again, because they are soft and silky and pretty. They remind me of that ridiculous day at the Beverly Center, when he made my stomach do somersaults via telephone. I am finally trying to move on, to figure out what it is I’m meant to be doing that is not being with him. I can almost look back and see where I let my heart leap a little too far, talked myself into feelings that seemed right and reasonable.

Courtney sends these gratitude lists and I am working on mine. I have so much to be grateful for and I keep going back to whether I’d do it all over again, whether I got something good out of all this. And of course, on one level I did, for sure. All these people who are now in my life, who are just there, who don’t at all feel like they are “his” in any way.

But the whole “there are no accidents,” well, I don’t know. That doesn’t compute for me. I don’t know why I would fall so hard and so fast to have things fall apart so spectacularly. I don’t know why it would make it so I want to compare everyone else I meet to him, or why I would want to see all the things in him I wanted to see, the things I want to be and want whoever I’m with to be as well. I can’t regret anything I did and yet I miss the time and the energy and most of all, I miss my judgment. I know, there was no way to know and yet I feel like I should have seen it coming, should have been more cynical or suspicious or any of those things I so rarely am. I generally consider it a strength, and I do tend to wear my heart on my sleeve and I know I was in such a good place before him. I was ready to tackle everything and now I am barely sure if I can make it through a day.

Even at my most sparkling, new haircut, new clothes, new lipstick, the biggest smile I can summon, no matter how much I try to fake it I don’t quite seem to make it. Maybe no one else can tell, and last night, I did laugh, for real and out loud. How could I not when sneaking off for a madcap topless photo shoot, then hearing some of my favorite readers, then getting to fish a candy cane out of a friend’s cleavage? Of course it was fun and yet I couldn’t help but compare it to last month. I was standing in the doorway while he said he couldn’t make it talking to a very cute someone and I could kick myself now but I am trying to be a bigger person than I was in 2004, to not let myself get dragged down by the weight of the worst feelings at a time when I need to see ahead, not behind. I know I have to accept that there is not going to be some big meeting of the minds, any real closure, any real anything. It doesn’t matter what I might have gotten him for Hannukah or what Adam would’ve made of him or any of the things I thought before the fittingly funereal day. I am looking forward to 2007, to starting over, but I also know that the date is so arbitrary. It’s not about starting over, but working with what I’ve got, no matter how much I may hate who that is and want to erase her. I can’t and instead of trying have to just start from this second, no matter how much I want to fast forward to somewhere better. I think the ultimate letting go will be when there is nothing to “let go” of, where it’s not anger or even indifference but a blank slate, an empty space filled with something new.