Letting Go

Something was said to me the other day and I don't remember the exact words but It went something like "stop using your feet to kick your own ass, and start putting them in front of you to move forward." I am sure that I screwed it up, but you get the general meaning of it. So in the moment, it was just negated to get me out of the situation. However, as I replayed the conversation, as I do, I had to ask myself what am I really holding on to?!?

As I started digging into that a little, I find that I am only holding on to my own guilt. I am not begrudging of anyone anymore. I don't have a hatred toward anyone that has hurt me or wronged me. I really don't have any animosity towards anyone or anything. I have found my peacefulness with everyone and everything in my life, EXCEPT ME! 

As I have said before, I am harder on myself than anyone else ever could be. My situation with Johnathan, I don't have any hard feelings to anyone but myself. Me not telling the love of my life that I loved her when I had the opportunity, not her fault, mine. My guilt, I own that. Me holding on to relationships long past the time of a healthy divide, I am guilty of the time lost that could have been spent more constructively. All of the things that have made up my life that I feel that I have not done right and carry with me everyday, that is the guilt I live with. 

So, as I am going through this time letting go, I am finding out what I already know. I hold these things in order to preserve the reminder not to do these things again. The wedding band in my key chain, the birth certificate in my bible, the trinkets from relationships along the way and ALL of the other crap that I keep to these wounds open so that I don't repeat the cycle. 

However, I now see that I am the cycle that is causing the most pain. It is reliving those moments that caused me the most pain that I visit most. Seeing that now, I realize that is not healthy! The past is the past... It is unchangeable. I don't have to hold on to the guilt and pain to take the lesson away from the situation. I don't have to hold that gold circle to let go of my divorce. I don't have to continue to harbor feelings for the love of my life to feel the pain of what may or may not ever be, just to remind to not let it happen again. I don't have to continue to stab myself over the situation with my son to realize that I received my life lesson for that. 

I know that I will always be my own worst critic, but I don't have to beat myself to death with every life experience just to take the lesson from it. So as I process the mistakes of the past and let them go it allows me to move forward into whatever the future may or may not hold for me. It also gives me the opportunity to see that I have been the one causing the most pain and DON'T have to do that to me. Shows me that I can take my lesson and move on. 

So as I move on today. Move with me... Let go of the guilt that holds you still. DON'T be still... MOVE forward... If you can't move forward, MOVE laterally. JUST MOVE. Don't be still in your life. Still causes stale. Don't let life go stale.

A step forward

~Michael