Letting go

Stress is a bitch.

Life is full of stress.

Stuff going on in my life right now that's hard to reconcile. Things I need that I don't have, things I want that I can't have, and things I don't want that I have no way to avoid.

I feel like a shark, that if I stop swimming, I'll die.

:::conjuring up my best Michael-Phelpsian image of myself:::


The question is, how much of this is self-imposed, or self-inflicted?

It's not that I'm making up things to be stressed about. No need for that.
And it isn't that I'm stressing about things that don't matter.

But sometimes, I think there is a strong tendency- for myself, and for others- to hang onto things long past when they should be let go.

And that "letting go" process doesn't always work very efficiently.

For one thing, you've only "let go" of something when you actually do the letting go part.

If you dwell on it, stress about, or otherwise continue to let it have an effect on your life, you didn't let go.
Repeated statements of "I'm done with this," notwithstanding.

When you're over something, it's GONE.

And yet... how often does that really happen?

Sometimes it does.
For example, you meet many, many people in your life, some of whom you connect with in some way. School friends, work friends, acquaintances, really.
Leave your job?
Most people say they will "keep in touch."
Most people don't.

But for most of them, most of the time, they really do move on.
You can tell because of the large numbers of people whom you used to know, that now, you can't even recall their names. You don't think about them. You barely even remember them.

THAT is "letting go."

Contrast that with the nagging things that bother you day in and day out. The heartbreaks. The annoyances. The frustrations.

If there is ANY emotion still attached, you didn't let go.

Maybe that's the key.

Emotion is the glue that keeps you connected to things.

So if you could just not feel anything...

you'd have a serious case of clinical depression.

Not the best solution.

I don't think there is a best solution- hence the millions of therapists out there, trying to help people find ANY solution, let alone the best one.

Anyhow.

There are a number of things in my life that I need to let go of. Emotional baggage that drags on me day after day after day. Just when I think I've finally "gotten past it" I realize that thinking about whether I have or not kind of proves that I haven't, really. Not yet.

Oddly, it isn't the "big" things that hang on the hardest.
It's the little ones.

I've often thought my mind was a sieve- maybe the holes are so large they can't filter out the little things?