Let Go

Move the fuck on.

“Block his number,” my person said succinctly and to the point.

HOLY FUCK.

I had not thought of that.

Then I thought.

Shit.

That’s the right thing to do.

I just unfriended as well off social media and each small step was a little moving in the right direction.

There’s nothing wrong with the guy, fyi, in case you’re wondering.

What’s wrong or perhaps not quite right, or perhaps better yet, what wasn’t working for me, is that I was falling into the same stupid trap again.

Better to let go the person and move the fuck on.

I don’t do myself or anyone else a service when I’m up in fantasy land.

And it wasn’t that good, I remind myself.

No.

It wasn’t bad either, it just didn’t serve, it wasn’t good for me, it didn’t fulfill my heart, I was left wanting a lot more and wanting more from a person who is not capable of offering more is something that I do and I have often crumpled in the face of change, when oh, that rut is so comfy and I know it so well.

And.

Didn’t you see?

I just redecorated and got a new couch for the space.

Fuck me.

I expressed to my person today that I was actually relieved that the guy I was supposed to spend time with last night cancelled.

But in a twist I wasn’t expecting my person added, you deserve to be respected, block his number.

What?

You mean I deserve the time of day, the respect of my schedule, that my needs are important.

Stop the fucking presses.

Yes.

Of course.

And if I don’t step up to that it’s my own damn fault.

So rather than fall down that hole again, Alice decided to take the elevator up to the top of the hill and look around.

See what she can see.

I see yoga in my future.

Signed up for a class tomorrow.

Went today.

Hella stiff and sore and snaggle toothed and old, man I just felt stupid and old.

Then, as I relaxed a little, I did think to myself, lady pants you sat in a desk chair at school for 29 hours, of course your body is out of whack, and you didn’t get more than five or six, max, and I do mean max, hours of sleep for the last four nights.

Give yourself a break and be happy you showed up to the mat.

Expectations always do take me down.

They just lead to resentment.

And a life lived on resentment is not one I wish to have.

Nope.

This lady is all about happy and fun.

Let me repeat that.

Happy.

And.

Fun.

Fun does not need to be roller coasters.

Fun can be writing Christmas cards or sending packages in the mail.

I got my oldest niece her gift today, I saw it last week at Rainbow and was quite taken with it, granted it was more expensive than I had planned on spending, art supplies, but, fuck, I just knew it when I saw it, had her name written all over it.

So.

I got it.

And then I mailed her card and my mom’s Christmas package and my sister’s too, which included a few things for my youngest niece.

It really felt so sweet and good to put their packages in the mail.

I feel blessed that I can send them gifts.

It wasn’t always that way and there were years and lapses in time that I didn’t send my family gifts.

It feels right to make up for that now and to continue fostering connections.

Even if it’s just a card in the mail.

It means I love you.

I do you know.

So much.

Breaks my heart.

I’m ok with that, heart break, I’ve had my share, I’ll probably have more before my days here on this plane are done.

And that’s ok too.

It means I’m alive.

What a fucking gift, this, to be alive, to be in this skin.

It’s not perfect, but it’s mine and I’m ever so grateful for it.

Yup.

A beautiful gift that I get to treat well and respect and care for and love.

I’m getting better at that all the time.

And I do deserve respect.

It felt good to remind myself of that this afternoon.

I had made the phone call check in to my person this afternoon while I was at the beginning of my work shift, although certainly not the beginning of my day–that had started hours and hours before I even got to work.

But I did not block the phone number until late in the afternoon.

When.

Ha.

I was wondering vaguely in the back of my head if he was going to text me today and what would I say and.

What the fuck, Martines?!

Ugh.

Block the number now.

It’s like a dangerous default, I don’t even know my brain is going there.

This is why I work with people, this is why I make myself accountable to others, their perspectives are so fucking important.

I walk around with god damn blinders on.

“He’s totally interested in you,” my girlfriend said to me years and years ago.

“No he’s not, he’s gay,” I told my friend.

“Gay?  Are you out of your mind, he’s literally beating your face with his penis, Carmen, he’s so not gay,” my friend said with incredulity, then dipped her french fry into the pool of ranch dressing on her plate.  “Seriously, he has a great big boner for you and it’s a not a gay boner.”

Turns out.

He wasn’t gay.

Once in a while.

I think.

Oh, look, a new perspective, I’ve taken off  the blinders.

But.

You know.

I’m always in my way.

I’m the one thing in my way.

So, pray to God, I’m serious, get the fuck out of your own way.

Go have fun.

Go play pinball.

Go to yoga.

Let go.

Move on.

And don’t worry.

You’re on a collision course with what is supposed to happen.

You just can’t see around the corner.

You’re not blind.

But you’re not a mind reader either.

Just saying.

And A Razor Of Love

You have been unfriended.

I let you go.

“Let him go,” my person said to me tonight, eyes warm, soft, gentle, holding me every step of the way.

I have.

I have let so much go.

So much it is unreal.

I have walked through an unwieldy mess of emotions and feelings, grief, sorrow, joy, reprise, replete, repeat, let go, surrender.

And breathe.

There were many tears tonight when I met my person.

That happens.

Especially when I feel safe, I can be vulnerable and express my feelings and though there were many tears, they were great big tears of relief.

“This is a huge forgiveness piece for you around your mother,” my person said.

Yes.

Oh yes.

I could have easily called this blog, “If it’s not you, it’s my mother.”

I laughed out loud when I heard that.

But it’s the truth.

There has been a seismic shift in my relationship with my mother, my memory, my life, my childhood, all the things and place and sorrows whereof.

An easing.

A, yes, a deep forgiveness.

“You still need to bring up all this with a therapist,” my person said, “that’s going to be a part of your program, isn’t it?”

A yup.

The therapist in training, moi, will be doing therapy as a part of my Masters in Psychology program.

It doesn’t happen for a little while yet, but I have already experienced some of it in the work that I have done with my cohort and to be honest, it has been the school work that has helped lead me to this opening in my heart and this re-organizing of my emotions around my mom.

I used to joke, I guess used to is not exactly on point, since i said it on Sunday to an acquaintance at the cafe, “I was raised by wolves, well meaning wolves, but wolves nonetheless.”

Then.

Yesterday I had this very insightful conversation with my mom about some family origin stuff, I found out some things about my mom, about my dad, about my beginnings, and it was like so many puzzle pieces connecting.

I saw blue skies.

I saw joy.

I saw so much sorrow and grief and I saw a way out and through.

I have been on this way out and through for a very long time.

I have done so much work.

SO MUCH.

I suppose the gift is that I will continue to get to do this work, there are new places to delve, new revelations to be had, new angles, there will be more of this path to walk down.

I had this strange moment while I was out at the park with my charges and it just ran through me, call your mom.

And I did.

And we talked.

Suffice to say it was pretty private and personal and because so much of what was revealed was not actually about me, although it affected me greatly and a times very gravely, it is not my place to reveal what was revealed to me.

At least not in this forum.

I have already decided that I will be writing a paper on it, the experience and the exchange of information, it was very relevant to a final paper project that I have to work on for school.

I’ll be hitting that bad boy out of the park come Sunday.

I’m not ready for Sunday yet, let me stay here in today for a little while yet.

However.

I can say, quite unequivocally that I am no longer going to carry around grief that is not mine.

I am not a repository for my mother’s grief any longer.

I did not say that to her, that shift in perspective did not happen until today, this morning, when, yes, ugh, I was at yoga and I was in a bind.

LITERALLY!

I did a binding pose that I have not hit once since starting yoga two months ago, but today, I reached for it and my heart lifted and I felt this burst of joy, a great wave of it, a tidal pool of it, a tsunami of emotions.

I almost laughed out loud with the happy.

Then, yes.

Of course.

I cried.

I bawled.

Well.

Maybe not bawled, that sounds like it was loud, it was not loud, although it felt deafening at one point to be so sluiced in feelings.

I’m not going to carry her sorrow any more, I told myself.

It was washed away, my mother’s grief and pain and sorrow, her losses and misfortunes these are not my burdens, I don’t have to carry them.

I don’t know that I was ever properly asked and the tragedy of that is that I am only realizing this now.

And.

The amazing, awesome, hot damn news.

Is that I am realizing it at all.

I love my mom.

She did the best she could and if you had said that to me at certain points in my life I would have told you to go hit the crack pipe again and get back to me.

I always felt like that was an excuse, sorry it was so rough kiddo, I was just doing the best I could.

But in between the spaces, the lines of telephone wires looping through the history of our shared and divergent paths, there was a shift and I got it.

I got it.

I got it!

And it’s not mine to carry, never was, I don’t own it, I can let it go, I can be washed away, the names and places, the stories and traumas and dramas, all just crenellated peaks in the dunes at Ocean Beach, the stars wink back to me over the storm dark seas and I was washed clean.

Gasping for breath, yet, so in my body, so present, tears leaking down my face, but also a joy and gratitude.

A happiness that was solace to my soul.

A lifting up.

A, yes, heart opening.

And I walk through.

Flew through.

Drifted into the happy, joyous, free of the deep blue sky.

The sky of my childhood, bright blue, like his eyes when I was a young girl, face pressed to the window of the long yellow school bus as it rolled in between the cornfields on the way to school in Wisconsin.

The woman burgeoning with promise, escaping still, for many year yet to go, but she is there in my heart, and she is free to move on.

Let him go.

Let her go.

Let myself go.

Fly so high into the promise of those bright blue skies.

Above this world, the cusp of the soul of God calling to me.

The smile of heaven above me.

And all the world below me.

Love.

Love.

It’s all love.

That’s all the feeling I need now from my mother.

Just the love and letting go of anything other than that.

Awareness.

Acceptance.

Action.

I act on my own.

As my own woman.

Here.

Now.

Always.

I am free.

Free to move about my world carrying only those things and feelings that serve me in joy.

And.

That.

Well.

Not only is that all.

It is.

Everything.