The Art of Letting Go - Hopefully this isn't too "Self-Help"

How many times have you heard the phrases “Let go,” “Let it go,” “Just let go” or “Let them go.”? How many times have you uttered those words? It’s common English diction really. When you “Google it” music, lyrics, and “how to let go” of lovers, grudges, bitterness, and regret all come up within just the top ten.

Letting go, however, is one of those many things in life that are easier said than done. From personal experience, I believe that there is an art to letting things, people, situations, and emotional attachments go.

What exactly are we let go of? Pain, emotional baggage, people, grief, love, anguish, stress, disappointment, regret, anger and anything else in life that plagues us, right? It’s a process.

Maybe it just becomes easier with age but when I think of all the people, memories and just “things” – both tangible and emotional – it’s quite the impressive journey.
When I was five, my Kindergarten boyfriend left the school and moved. That was an attachment I had to let go of. That same year my Grandma Mary died, which was someone I had to just let go. Those two occurrences seemed so simple, but is it as we grow older or as we grow emotionally and mentally that it all becomes more complicated?

Perhaps there was a moment in my life where, in the midst of everything that I thought I knew was spinning out of control, I decided that I had to take control of as much of my life as I possibly could. This probably led to my inability to “let things go.” Maybe inability is the wrong word. I can do it, but it’s never easy for me.

After a terrible bout with severe depression in 2008/2009 I’ve discovered some interesting patterns in my life. I’ve randomly thought about the events that have unfolded in my life in the past decade only to come to the realization that I have some very self-destructive habits. One of these habits has everything to do with the whole issue of letting go.

One of my best friends said it best when he asked my husband, “Did you ever notice how Alison makes a big deal about the little things, she obsesses over them, but the huge things in life just don’t bother her?” I wanted to argue but I couldn’t. He was dead on. My sarcastic self said “Oh, come on, I’d rather be mad that my hair looks like shit than the big catastrophes in my life because if I think about the big things all the time, I’d kill myself.”

I don’t want to let go of the little things because then I’d have to face the big stuff. Seems like common sense to me, but, it also allows me to push away the anger and pain. I sweep a lot under the rock. I shelve things that shouldn’t have a shelf life. I was wired early on in my childhood to “save face,” or to keep certain things private, and now that seems to have totally wrecked my persona.

But now, I want to study and explore this “art” of letting go. I’ve lost so many people in my life in the past 5, even 10 years. And I’m not talking about loved ones passing. I’m talking about people that have been “let go” or have let me go. And now that I’m away from the circumstances, both physically and mentally, I can really reflect.

When you move, when you graduate, when you grow as a person, you lose touch with people and drift apart. Some of these things feel natural and some do not. Some leave imprints and some just happen like the change of a season overnight. When you feel the shift, however, and I mean really feel it that is when you know that you’ll be forever changed. And now, my reflections:

My first love did not love me back, and he wasn’t always the nicest guy. One day we just stopped talking. He moved away and I moved forward. We mutually let each other go.

My first boyfriend, also not a very nice guy, ended up stealing from me, his roommates, and a couple other people close to me. He left apology letters for everyone, except me. I was hurt, ashamed, and filled with anger…every once in awhile I catch myself getting all worked up about how terrible he was, but the further away I get from it the easier it has become to take a breath and let it go.

I had an integral person in my life abandon me in so many ways…she chose everything over me. The worst part is; I don’t know if she was ever really there for me. Perhaps she was there physically but what about mentally? I want to let her go in every sense, walk away forever, but she is genetically tied to me, and irreplaceable. I’ve been detaching from her bit by bit since I was 13…this is the kind of letting go that isn’t just a “cut and run” situation.

My best friend, or ex-best-friend as I now refer to him, was my friend since birth. I put a lot of pressure on him to be this amazing force in my life. I thought I believed in fate and he was this amazing part of mine. I gave him everything he asked, and then some, and in the end it just wasn’t what either of us needed. I looked to him for a sense of family and he came through. I idolized his family because, with everything they’d been through they all had this amazing bond and were wonderfully happy. They all thought of me as something-better-than-nothing, and they accepted me for who and what I was: completely fucked up, but with a good heart.
I’d struggled with him for years. I wanted him to be a life-changing friend and he wanted me to be this simply rockin’ girl and in the end we both failed. When we grew out of our teen angst age and I dated his roommate and he dated girls from work, parties, or concerts, we just couldn’t find our groove. We fought, and I cried…all the time. I wanted him to care and he wanted me to not care…it was a set up for disaster. One weekend we went on a trip together and I realized that I was trying so hard to be this perfect girl for him; I didn’t even know what girl I was anymore. I’d completely lost me.

I went home to my then-boyfriend, now-husband and cried telling him I had to change and he told me that I needed to do any and everything to be happy, because he was suffering too. But, he didn’t want to lose me. He had lived too long in the shadow of this stressful friendship I’d been fighting for.

After weeks, months and then some of serious therapy where I laid all my shit on the table, I thought my very bestest friend was behind me. He was supportive and present, dating a really sweet girl who made him happy, and I’d salvaged my hanging-by-a-thread relationship with the only man who ever loved me, and who I felt like I kinda deserved. During my steps away from depression and anxiety I had begged my friend to let me go if I was too much of a handful. I’ve almost always seen myself as a burden on someone and in the past few years, I thought of myself more as a kind-of-unfortunate-looking personal driver, loan officer and/or rent-a-friend, than a substantial relationship for him, but he refused to just “Let me go.”

But then, because it’s my life and not a movie, the shit hit the fan and my “integral person” came back to completely fuck up all my progress. In the wake of all of the family drama and another episode of “Alison being forced into dealing with more than a twenty-something should have to” scenario, after too much alcohol, an Irish Punk Rock vibe gone wrong and some terribly fucked-up inappropriate conversation, my then-best-friend, now ex-best-friend, let me AND my then-boyfriend, now-husband GO, to be with the girl he loved.

For a month I cried myself to sleep and completely regressed. I’d gone through pangs of anger and serenity and then one day I just realized: we needed to let each other go. His family went through some serious anguish with all of this. We regret so much but almost felt a relief knowing it was over. Both parties involved have since moved in completely positive directions after the terrible incident and now I look back and it just makes me sad.

We had some amazing memories. We had some really good times. But at some point, we just had to let go. I couldn’t be the perfect girl he wanted, and he couldn’t be the man I needed. I should have let him go years ago but there was a certain dysfunctional co-dependence we shared.
Letting go of all of this sucked, to say the least. This is the big stuff I didn’t want to face! But, true to form, more recently, I just deal with the little things that bug me with the occasional major hurdle.

February was the month of answering all my questions from my childhood and facing my demons. I think March was the month of facing the high school drama all over again.
After a tumultuous love-hate relationship with Facebook I finally gave in and “friended” a few old high school friends. As if this wasn’t enough drama, I happened to have attended 3 different high schools. I found an old “flame,” now married with a family and everything and we started catching up.

At some point, the conversation went awry and I got the feeling that he thought my asking to meet up “for lunch sometime” was some kind of sexual code. One day he text me and I finally had to make it clear that "lunch" meant actually eating lunch and then he just stopped talking to me. One stressful night after one-glass-of-wine-too-many I found the strength to text him asking, “What you’re just never going to speak to me again? We can’t even be friends?”

He responded with “Please don’t ever text me again.” I quickly un-friended him on Facebook and had to let go of the fact that, even while I was doing right I still somehow did “wrong.” I have to let go of the fact that some people are just assholes.

I don’t think I will ever master this “Art of Letting Go” but with every dramatic incident I get better and better.

Life gives you these challenges every day and it’s up to us to decide if we hang onto them like a sentimental picture or a souvenir or if we just do the cool thing and “recycle” them. There are some people in this world that can actually just “let it go.” Most of them are men, but for women like me and most women in general, we have to study this concept much like we study the mystery of men. Maybe my next chapter on this will be the “Art of Closure.” Until then, I think I will just…stick to what I know.