Holding On & Letting Go

Deadlines knocking with their loud abrasive sound and begging to be remembered.The multiple inboxes with their growing number in the tiny red bubble. The text messages read but left unanswered. Projects growing dust, when just weeks before you had so diligently kept ahead. Emotional outbursts from seemingly everyone have left you drained, tired, and without motivation. Frankly, you’re wondering how you will do this for a full time job as an empath who tries desperately to not take on other’s emotions, but sometimes they’re strong enough you can’t shake them. You’re sleeping, but no, you’re not rested. Your dedication to working out three times a week, which you were so proud of was left behind with that wicked virus, which put you under the blankets for three whole days and then two weeks of recovery. Actually, to be honest it’s still lingering in coughs and sniffles. Did I mention there’s a bruise on your forehead that is extremely attractive? And then you drift to the fact that next year you will be balancing all of the same things except with multiple graduate level classes and everything grows a little foggy around the edges.

Somebody tell me I’m not the only one.

The only one snatching and stretching outreached fingers at passing time to try and squeeze a little more out of it. As if you could take hold of the watch wrapped around your tiny wrist and wind back the little knobs to find reprieve. Just a few more hours with a wee burst of energy and you could catch up really, you could.

Today I planned to get up early; attack this pile up of I’m behind on everything, and take over the world like we do every day Pinky. Except for the first time in my life I slept straight through my alarm. Sure, I sleep with earplugs, but I still hear every last noise around me. Thanks genetics for my super sonic hearing (you know who you are, mother). I woke up at 9:30, which is you know, late for me, and felt like I was already behind on the first day I’ve had in weeks to get back on my feet.

But now I’m sitting here and I’ve gotten through the inbox, which had grown fangs and claws, and I’ve cleaned up some drafts, which are due to other sites. I’m nowhere near done, but I’ve been thinking. I created my timelines on writing projects such as my book to benefit ME. They weren’t supposed to hold me captive and plunge my head under water, when the rest of life kept me from giving them their blood money. And hell, what kind of crap am I going to produce if it’s not coming from my core, which is so necessary to producing words with life. So I’m taking a cue from some friends, and trusting that rerouting my timeline to create the story I wanted to all along is worth the pain of letting go of a June deadline.

But how often do we do this? Cling fiercely to something, which was meant to help us, but is now hindering us all in the name of productivity or whatever else is your vice. We cling to past loves, we grab hold of new people that act like last year’s heartbreak, we see cycles, but don’t understand why. We stay in friendships, which leave us muddied from playing the doormat. We stuff down words and hurts because we are convicted this makes us stronger than the rest. We can all fill in the blank for something we instinctively grasp for, or maybe you can’t because it’s unconscious and all you know is something isn’t working.

What I do know? This leaves us tired and worn and fraying around our edges. My favorite writer, Hannah Brencher, wrote something the other day and it’s stayed with me. And I can’t find the post (my inbox has teeth, remember?) so I apologize for the paraphrase: life is just a metaphor for letting go. What do you need to let go of? A person? Old hurts that keep ripping you open over and over? Unrealistic ideals? I bet it’s nipping at you right now and you don’t want to look it in the eye. Because we all know the ripping of letting go. How bittersweet the hurt is and the hangover of knowing you can’t hold the thing you’ve lost any longer. Let it fall anyways.

Let it fall like rain on a hot summer day.

Because so often we let go only to pick things back up right before we’ve finally made a clean break. You’ve been pushing and tearing through the all the brush only to turn around, when if you had just kept going the woods cleared a little ways ahead. We turn around because it’s familiar. Because we say we can’t help it. Because dropping everything holding us back is scary and hard and takes us new places. But what if you made it through? Through the woods and into the clearing where you can finally see.

What would you do there and how would you feel?

When Chaos Reigns

Lately, life has been all blurred edges and falling pieces hurtling down faster and slower than my fingers can seem to grasp. And while I fail to run frantically enough to keep pace, I am somehow also far from being present. I fumble at gestures of letting pieces fall into place, which honestly, is pretty much sandpaper against the grain. It just ain’t me. I love clean lines, the deep dark blues of almost dark, and the calmness of whites and greys. Patterns and bright colors feel loud and all wrong most days in my own quiet space. I want to take hold and shift all the things in my life around until they are just so.

But life doesn’t bend and fold itself into the strategic color coded maze which is our agenda. And don’t even get me started on the self created stress of feebly attempting to fit life into neatly labeled boxes. Here on my left we have work in this nice medium sized box and friends in the gold glittered on my right. Don’t forget about family and school on the shelf above.  A box for everything. A label maker’s heaven.

But the thing is, people and places, and the sharp curving lines of those life gone wrong kinda times just can’t be duct taped into our self assigned and allotted spaces. Life seems to have the habit of bursting out of duct taped boxes with silvery threads dangling down and every bit of too much spilling out over broken edges.

And you’re going places, meeting people, and building & building and striving & striving cause nobody’s gonna do it for ya and this is what we’re taught. But there’s hustle and then there’s frenzy.

The line is as dark as it is faint. Tip toe around that line and learn it well. Because on one side there is the sweetness of rest as well as good beautiful faith filled work. Cross over to the other and never enough will creep into your bones and grind them down to a dust. And as never enough distracts you, anxiety will steal away with the pieces of every good thing already in your hands as you sprint to get to the place where you think you’ll rest.

But there’s always another staircase to climb – I seem to find them around every corner. Moving and reappearing like Hogwarts come to life.

Jobs. Money. You know the drill. All those things. They’ll own you and run you. Move back to a kinder metric my friend. Those things will color your world in shades of envy laced with fear tinged by the thoughts of never being enough. How ugly that must be. How alone is it there? No wonder that place slowly fades to the color of nothing which is the living kind of death.

And then in a beautiful moment where I call upon my inner Carrie Bradshaw, I can’t help but wonder… Didn’t I stop measuring my success this way a long time ago? Maybe I need a reminder that this is all so fleeting and the real work, the real nitty gritty let’s get down to it and hustle is the much harder and truer work of knowing god & loving people. I mean that’s my metric and I swap it often for others, but I need to come back to this.

I don’t know if this lesson is just for me alone or perhaps also, another’s ears. To step back and survey how we are measuring our days and hours together. 

Breathe. Be present and aware of what you’re really after. Trust that god is with you. Moving from frenzy to hustle means repeatedly taking a step back and choosing to align with your truest self, which you know is quite the work after all.