Why I won't let go ...

I read a lot of self-help books. I’m reading one at the moment by a Buddhist Monk, it’s excellent, and describes an entirely new way to approach life to try and avoid the ups and downs and simply be. That’s something I’ve been striving for in my own life for many years a sense of stability and yet it always seems to elude me. I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that by my very nature, the very things that make me ME make it quite unlikely that I will have the type of stable life I see in my peers and I’m actually happy with it now.

Lots of self-help books, therapies and counsel tell us to “let go of the past and live in the moment”. How many times have we heard that? Let go of the past and you will be free from it ….I’ve long struggled with the idea of letting go and often wonder if indeed it’s a skill I simply cannot acquire or that it’s not clearly defined enough for me to be able to tick that box. People tell me I need to be free of the past and not only do I not know what that would feel like but the past, my past is what got me here to today.

I have this baking tray, it was my mothers and I have countless memories of baking butterfly cakes with her in this very tin. And yorkies. And now I do that myself with my son and it brings me great joy. But it’s old beyond belief, not really non-stick any more and only has 9 holes and I often want 12. But I can’t buy another one. Not I don’t want too, because I do, but I can’t. I pick them up in the shops and put them down again. I’ve just bought a whole load of other new trays but not that one.

And the reason I can’t is because I cannot bear to part with my one. Rationally I know I will still have the memories without the thing, I also know that my mum is not in the baking tray. I carry around this guilt as well with the things I cannot let go of, like I must hide them away and not admit their significance because it’s a sign I’ve not “moved on”. It’s just a baking tray I tell myself. And yet it’s not. It’s so much more. It’s a fundamental part of who I am, where I came from, a joyful reminder of the mother I was blessed to have, and the hopes I have for the type of mother I will become and how close I feel to her when I’m in my kitchen, apron on, covered in flour. It’s not just a baking tray.

I do this in other areas of my life. As a recovering alcoholic I also relive experiences from my past and open them up again – like picking a scab that I won’t let completely heal. I’m not deriving any pleasure from the experience of reliving these shameful events but something is happening for me. I’ve tried to stop myself doing it, like literally every time I think about something I try to force myself to think about another thing or rationalise the experience, sometimes that helps.

Most recently I’ve been doing this with my last job which was so awful, well it was bad. It had profound impacts on my well-being. I wake up reliving conversations and situations I had during my time in that place, I can’t drive past the office without my heartbeat racing. I dread bumping into anyone from that place, I drive past cars that might be those of former colleagues my driving style changes.

I am clearly holding on to a lot. And I’m sure the psychoanalysts/therapists out there will tell me that all this is weighing me down and it’s not healthy, and maybe it’s not.

And yet how else do we heal but with a passage of time and who has the job of determining when that time is right. It might take me 30 years to get rid of the baking tray, or 3 more weeks. I might feel the rage boiling inside me every time I think about that job ….or those experiences…or I might think about them one more time and then not again for years and with a wholly new and healthy outlook that the passage of time, circumstance and growth have allowed me.

I know two things for sure:

o The healing DOES happen in time. I have personal lived experience of this in every aspect of my life.

o Feeling shitty about how long it takes DOES NOT help.

So I suppose this is a message to anyone out there who is carrying any excess baggage, or baking trays, don’t feel bad. If you need to pick that scab and work out the events of the past with a newly sober or better frame of mind then do so, and take all the time you need to do it. Rushing it won’t work. Feeling bad about how long it’s taking will not be a useful place for you to grow from – I know personally I cannot develop myself at all if I’m busy shaming myself for a behaviour now, or from years gone by.

We have all had a heck of a year in one way or another, good, bad, ugly. It’s been amazing for many, horrendous for many and yet the passage of time no matter what happens continues. It was this truth which I found most painful when I first lost my mother and which now gives me comfort that whatever emotions, situations or thoughts I am having – they too will pass. And I know now that each time I revisit an event in my mind my perspective shifts, just a little, but enough, and as a result my outlook shifts. I force myself to look at the pain in order process and move on when I’m ready, I’m not sure I let go though, I suspect I reframe – the emotions are still there, the events and experiences all still happened and still made me feel the way I did. I’m no less sad that my mum died now than I was the day it happened but I’ve learned to manage that pain and to incorporate it, if I let it go entirely then I don’t feel I would be authentically myself – if we choose to let go of all the painful things, to be in the moment, joyful and happy all the time we don’t really experience life in all it’s splendour. Almost all of my pains arise from the love or investment I made personally – I’m not gonna stop doing that, I don’t love my husband any less so that when he dies I won’t feel sad. I didn’t start my new job as a guarded and broken individual and as a result I’ve forged some excellent working and personal relationships. It is because I hold on I can do that, because I hold on to all the experience of life and use it to help inform my decisions and behaviours.

Staying still, being in the moment, might mean being in a painful moment but if you are really in it -actually owning your emotions and trying to work through them then I’m not sure that’s something to be ashamed off or a point at which you need to let go. If your mind or heart needs more time to process, adjust and heal then hold on tight….when and IF you are ready you can let go, if that’s the right thing for you. In the mean time let’s stop beating ourselves and our friends up because they are taking time to process or heal ….instead with everything that is going on why not show people more love, more care and more support and realise that we do not know what is going on behind the screens!