Getting by Letting

The other day the leash attached to our puppy Bullet's harness got wound around a table leg. In trying to free him, I let go of the handle of his leash and concentrated on untangling the knot at its source. Bullet grabbed the leash handle and hung on. Of course, this way, he was stuck and couldn't be released from his predicament. 

It was like he was in one of those tubular finger puzzle traps where the harder you pull against it, the tighter the tube grabs your finger. "If only you'd let go, you'd be instantly free!" I thought. But he was fixated on 'helping' to free himself. 

Image courtesy of pasja1000 at Pixabay.com

The lesson was not lost on me. Sometimes I get into predicaments and I figure I have to free myself (since I was the one who got into the mess in the first place). 

But all I really needed to do was let go.  Let it go, as in quit obsessing, stop trying to make it better, stop trying to explain the reasons why, release the grudge, forgive, accept things, places, and people the way they are, and I'll be free. 

Not free of the leash. Not free of the relationships and linkages in my life. But free of being bound by my own efforts to free myself, to MAKE things happen. 

Free to enJOY the relationships. Free to make mistakes. Free to admit I was wrong. Free to love more unconditionally. Free to let go of the past. Free to embrace the present. Free to look forward to the future without dread. 

Let go of the handle I think I have on things. Give the handling of the handle to the Handler. Quit striving (not in the sense of trying, but in the sense of hanging on to strife). Trust that things can work themselves out WITHOUT my input. That I can be helpless without being hopeless. That I can love without trying to change the opinions or the behaviors of others. That I can respect others' right to be who they are, and expect them to respect my right to be who I am.

Can I do that?

Yes. Yes I can. 

How to make bad things worse

"I see you're looking better than you were a couple of days ago. I wanted to stop by and tell you."

You should have stopped there.

I should have let you stop there. I was vulnerable and needed to talk to someone I trusted, not this perfect stranger to me. In the whole time I've known you, we've only had one conversation - a year ago.

"Thanks. I was struggling earlier this week, things have really been stressful. Thinking I'd be much better off if I just wasn't here."

Bad choice of words - she will think you mean something more than what you're saying. What I'm thinking of is stress leave, not "checking out." Oh what's the difference anyway. I just want her to go away. I wish she would just go away. I'm tired, I want to go home and get out of this awful place.

[condensed version of the repeated 10-minute tirade that followed] "Oh my God, Judy. You need help. You need to get help right now. I mean, call your doctor first thing Monday morning. I'm serious, get him to prescribe some antidepressants. I mean it! and I'm checking up on you on Monday to see if you've called him." 

Back-pedal. Let her know that is really not what you meant. AT ALL. 

Photo "Portrait of
Pointing Male" by
imagerymajestic at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

"Look, I would never commit suicide. Really. But I understand how some people can think that way."

Oops, I recognize that look. Oh crap, she's getting on her white horse and going to save the day. No-o, that's that LAST thing I want. All I want to do is get away from here, to go home, for her to shut up and leave me alone.

"No, that's way too close to the line. You've GOT to get some help. Talk to a therapist, are you seeing someone? you have to see someone." 

Oh great, now she's ordering me around!!! Why doesn't she just go away? Can't she see how stressed out she's making me? How can I get out of this? Maybe a little humour?

[By this time my head is in my hands as she rants on and on about how she was depressed and how she got help and that I need to do the same.] 

"So," I joke, "if I kill myself, THEN will you leave me alone?" 

This attempt at humour only adds fuel to the fire. Her reaction only shows how little she knows me. More and more she convinces herself that I'm in imminent danger and that she has to "save" me. Will she NEVER shut up?? 

[Finally I decide to be straight with her because beating around the bush isn't helping! I hate confrontation, but she's backing me into a corner. And when I am backed into a corner, I go on the offensive.] My voice raises; it is clipped and stern. "Listen. You are treating me like I'm two years old, like you have to be my savior or something. It's making me very uncomfortable, and I want you to stop this, and leave me alone."

She doesn't leave me alone. She goes on the defensive for a while, then turns around and attacks again, same pushy attitude, same ordering me around, same heavy-handed control stuff as before.

And she promises (sounds like she threatens) to check in with me on Monday. Which makes me not want to go there on Monday. Or any other day, if she was going to be there in my face all the time.  As a matter of fact, I hadn't started to consider suicide - even in jest (and it WAS only in jest) - until she started ranting about it. And now I was fantasizing about how many ways I could force her to shut her mouth!

You see ... how much better it might have been for her to say, "You look better today, you looked ill earlier in the week." and for me to say, "Thanks, I do feel a bit better," (which I DID until she started jumping down my throat) and left it at that. But no-o. My guard was down - I was tired - and discouraged - and vulnerable.

And what she actually said to me had the exact opposite effect than the one she wanted. Instead of giving me someone to talk to, she made me not want to talk to her about anything, because she'd only try to control my life and my thinking. Instead of making me feel like I was supported, she made me feel like I was being attacked, assaulted, and harassed. Instead of me knowing that I was cared for, I ended up feeling like now I was going to be her "special little project" and that I'd never be out from under her microscope. 

She may indeed have "meant well"... but her attitude and her actions were way over the top, and more of a hindrance to any help I might have been considering. I felt like someone who complained of a sniffle, suddenly being forced to go to the hospital and hooked up to an IV and a respirator.

Overkill. There's a reason they call it that. It's what makes bad things way worse. 

Progressively unwrapped

In one of my previous posts, I talked about personal guidelines that I have established, over the course of the last five years, for my own reactions to life and to people's (including my) behavior.

Lately it seems as though I've been having to reinforce some of these, especially the last one, where I walk away from relationships with people who consistently make me feel "less than." 

Some of these folks are persistent, and apparently will stop at nothing - including recruiting other people into their campaigns - to draw me back into the place where they are controlling and manipulating me again. (Fortunately, now I see what they're doing well in advance, which gives me a chance to regroup.) So, I've had to re-draw some boundaries. Again. (It happens; some folks just don't take no for an answer until right around the hundredth time, LOL) 

When I speak of graveclothes, (and I frequently do speak of them on this blog) I mean those things that others - by their reactions to my existence or to my behavior - have wrapped around me so tightly that I internalized them, made them a part of who I was and the way I thought about life. These were / are things over which I have had no control and which then gained the power to control me - things like "what will people think" and "if only" and "what if" and "nobody likes me" and so forth.

The more often I refuse to be bound up again by the old smelly graveclothes of being victimized or of trying to make everyone like me, the easier it becomes and the more free I am, free from being that chameleon that turns into whatever someone else wants me to be ... or of blending into the surroundings so that nobody notices me and therefore won't hurt me...again.

I'm more free to be me. To have my own thoughts. To hold my own opinions. To occupy space in the world. To be visible. To exist. 

Photo "Happy Jumping
Child" by chrisroll at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

For you see, for the longest time I didn't believe that I had the right to exist - not like other people who could get away with saying or thinking whatever they wanted and not getting slapped down for it. I'd been treated that way for such a long time - as far back as I can remember - that I thought it was normal. 

It wasn't. 

And when I got into recovery from that wilting-flower "don't-hurt-me" mind-set, I started to learn that who I was, and what I thought and believed and said as a result, was okay. Part of the reason I started this blog was because I had started to believe that I had something worthwhile to say, that I could actually contribute to the world, and make a positive difference if given the chance.  I also learned that if I made a mistake, it wasn't the end of the world and I could actually learn from it. (I know, duhhh...) 

This kind of thinking was alien to me before. I lived according to the rules of the chameleon: hide, blend in, disappear, change to fit the circumstances, and when all else fails, freeze and hope they don't notice you. I lived not in the present but either regretting the past or being afraid of the future. 

These are powerful forces. 

Until they're not. 

That process took some time ... and I'm still running up against hangers-on in my life where the graveclothes cling to me.

But for the most part, today, I live in the freedom of being who I am and of not caring what this one or that one thinks or believes or says. And this new lifestyle is so important and precious to me that it is well worth defending, well worth looking back once in a while to see how far I've come and remembering that "old me" enough to re-affirm that I never want to go back to that. 

Not ever. 

For, as my post title indicates, I'm more and more free as time goes on, as those things drop off me, as I learn to live in the now and to be who I am. 

Freedom might be something that a few people take for granted because it's all they've ever known - they have no idea how fortunate they are - but there used to be a huge bull's-eye on my back and now that it's fading away, I don't ever want it to reappear.

Please Stay

Every morning he would kiss her goodbye and disappear through the doorway to a world where metal clanked, steel melted and shaped into oven doors, and grease and grime was a way of life. I would stare at him, silently begging him not to leave.

"Please stay," my heart whispered. But ... he didn't.

When she'd become angry and furiously fish around in the closet for his old belt, he'd quietly slip away and head outside, not being able to bear watching what came next. 

"Please stay. Help me," my heart screamed. But ... he didn't.

Mom and Dad, 1984

When we would go to town and I'd opt to go with him to visit his buddies at the cobbler shop, I basked in the warmth of their voices and the easy camaraderie that they had with each other. There was no bitterness, no malicious gossip, no one-upmanship. "I better get back to the car," he'd eventually say. "She'll be done her shopping now." He'd endure the gentle ribbing about being hen-pecked. 

"Please stay. I like it here," my heart pleaded. But ... he didn't.

When I was a teen, and got into a fight with one of my older cousins down the road, I came home and told him how mean she'd been, what she'd called me. He was so angry that he stormed out of the house to make her aware how displeased he was. 

"Please stay. You'll just make it worse," my heart cringed. But ... he didn't. He went anyway, and came back even more angry. That was the moment he put a dent in the wall with his fist. I didn't know why - until later. He wanted to protect me. And my cousin's husband just laughed at him. 

The day of my wedding, I looked at him standing beside me in his Sunday best as we were just about to head down the aisle together. He seemed so strong, so dependable, just like always. "I love you, Dad," I told him. He looked down at me. "I love you too, dear," he murmured softly in his deep bass voice. He walked me toward my bridegroom, and gave me away to him, and then he went and sat down.

Unknown to me, he pulled my 2-year-old niece onto his lap and held her close. And as his own baby willingly walked out of his care and into someone else's, almost nobody saw the tears well up in his eyes and spill over onto his cheeks. 

"Please stay. Stay my baby girl," his heart wept. But ... I left. And yet ... I stayed his baby girl in my heart. I always had.

When I stood by his bedside in the hospital, watching him writhe and groan in pain he couldn't pinpoint in spite of the morphine in his IV, hearing him call out for his mama, I knew that asking him to stay would be asking his body to endure even more suffering. So I stood there ... and let him go. 

"It's okay for you to go, Dad," my heart whispered.  

And he did, just a few days later.

It's been over 20 years since that day. Yet I still feel his presence with me when I remember some wacky thing my own baby girl used to do that reminds me so much of him, and I'm so glad that she is getting to know him now. She always missed knowing him. And now the two of them are laughing together. In a way, neither of them will ever really leave, as long as I remember them.

"Thank you for staying."

A Light Rein

Some years ago - more years than I am comfortable admitting - I took some equitation lessons at a local riding stable. 

The instructor taught us, among many other things like flexibility and balance, about the importance of maintaining a "light rein." 

She said that when it came to holding the reins, beginners made two very common mistakes: keeping a tight rein, or a loose one. This had nothing to do with the grip of the rider on the reins themselves, but on the tension between the rider's hands and the horse's mouth ... through the reins. Keeping the reins too tight would end up with the animal not paying any heed to important direction from the rider because it would constantly be pulling at the bit. Keeping them too loose would not alert the rider to the mood of the horse, and would leave him or her unprotected if the mount were to shy away from something and jump sideways, or just take off running! 

The goal, she said, was to keep a "light rein." You could actually feel the movement of the horse's mouth through the reins when you were holding them correctly. Then, the reins became a means of communication back and forth between rider and mount. 

What I learned in an indoor riding ring, I have been able to apply to many aspects of living over the years: living life day to day and navigating relationships with people and with possessions.

Thanks to Tina Phillips for her photo,
"Girl On A Pony"
Source - www.freedigitalphotos.net

Since I've entered a new lifestyle of letting go, one of the things that has been a challenge for me has been knowing the difference between letting go and abandonment, between taking care of the ones you love and being compelled to engage in the dangerous occupation of "care-taking" (that is, a cleverly disguised method of controlling someone through continually rescuing them and making them dependent on your help). 

As I was pondering this fine line - truly a balancing act in which the boundaries keep changing according to the circumstances - the lesson I learned in the riding ring came to my rescue. 

A light rein... that's the answer. If there's two-way communication, if no one person feels obligated to the other, then that's the balance I need to seek. 

That means the rules change according to the situation. Rescuing (in an unhealthy way) in one circumstance is actually having compassion or showing mercy in another. Letting go is appropriate in one situation but it might be abandonment in another. The secret to knowing which one is in how it "feels" - it's okay to help someone, and for them to feel gratitude, as long as each person maintains his or her self-respect and doesn't feel "beholden" or "obligated" to the other. When that doesn't exist - it doesn't feel right.

It's okay to trust that feeling of "rightness."