Mellifluence

Reverb10: December 5 – Let Go.

Following a link from Gretchen Rubin at the Happiness Project, I found the Reverb10 site, which encourages us to spend each day of December looking back at 2010 and thinking about what we want in our lives in 2011, through daily prompts. Since I started nine days late, I'm not going to write about all of them, but I think I'll write now about one that sings to me. 

Reverb10: December 5 – Let Go.

What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

So much letting go this year, and over the year prior! You can dig around on my blog to see more details of this, but suffice it to say that I grabbed on to a dream 2 1/2 years ago and clung to it like a starving wolverine until 2 months ago,  despite all signs that told me that this wasn't working. I was so in love, and love blinded me to the obvious fact that I was not in the relationship I thought I was in. Ho hum. Oldest story in the book. But even knowing that, I couldn't let go. The message of letting go came to me so often. Once, during one of our many "practice breakups", I had lost a ring that I really valued. I couldn't find it anywhere, and so I finally accepted that it was gone forever. Taking my lover's clothes out of their space in my dresser, I found the ring, UNDER the clothes where it would have been virtually impossible for it to fall. To me, that message was loud and clear. Get out from under this, it said. But I didn't take heed, and found myself losing myself in my desperate attempts to cling to a relationship that anyone else could see wasn't working. I wanted it so badly. I thought we were building a future, but I was in a fantasy world. The messages came to me one on top of the other, and even then, I couldn't act. I was trapped by some deepseated longing to be loved the way I pretended he loved me. Then, it was over and I had no choice but to let go. The letting go was excruciating, like letting go of my own soul. There were the stages of grief: denial, despair, anger. I'm just now getting somewhat over the anger, and acceptance is peeking its head around the corner. I'm not sure I'm ready for it yet, anger is so comforting, in a way. But I'm finding the vise-grip of my heart slowly loosening. Some light gets in, these days, and some joy and laughter. Two months ago, I never would have thought I'd be in this place, contemplating a new future and new possibilities without the angst and suffering of the last 2 1/2 years. There are still some things to cope with, but dawn is coming. I can feel it.