Letting go.....

 

I admittedly have a difficult time letting go….of everything.

I am a pack-rat to my core, I keep everything, I am not just a keeper of things but also emotions. I tend to hold on to things, to turn them over in my head examine them, store them away, take them out again reevaluate them, critique how I dealt with them, then put them into long-term storage to dig back out later. This also applies to people, I have a very hard time letting go of people even when it is for the best for me to let them go. I have always been a firm believer that people can in fact change if they want to, the problem being most people don’t want to change or don’t know how. Once I care for someone it is near to impossible for me to let them go.

All these things are serious problems which I need to deal with. I think that the physical accumulation of stuff is the smallest problem. I do not mean smallest in size, because the amount of stuff I have is in no way small, but the least detrimental to me as a person. The emotional baggage, and the inability to let go of people are however emotionally, and mentally draining. This is why I need to learn to let go, I need to tell myself that sometimes giving up is what is best for me. Holding on to negative emotions is in no way good for me, it gives me ammunition for depression, anger, resentment, and guilt which are all things that do not need to be any stronger. I am going to try to start meditating again as I think this helps me clear my head, I have also been debating doing a detox diet which I hear can help not only physically clean your body but  clear out your mind, but I’m not sure I am ready for that yet.

Letting go of people is for me the hardest thing to do. There are people in your life that you never want to  let go of, people who have shaped who you are, but sometimes people have their time in your life and when that time ends….it ends. I do not mean that by letting go of them you love them less or value the time your spent with them less, but perhaps that you realize that everything, even people, have their seasons, and all seasons change and end. Perhaps it is the eternal optimist in me that holds onto people, hoping that tomorrow they will change, that tomorrow they will care equally for me as I do for them. In this way I hold on and hope for them, which it seems usually ends in my disappointment. I suppose the main problem with this is that I do not want to give up on people, especially people who I love and care about, but there must come a time when I cannot give anymore of myself to someone who is not giving anything to me.

So long story short I will be trying to make an effort to evaluate the things, emotions and people in my life and determine what needs to be held onto and what needs to be released. With any luck this will lighten my emotional load which could use a bit of lightning every now and again.