Letting go

There are pieces of my life I hold on to fiercely. I can't let them go no matter what.

Some of these things are good: memories that hover in my mind like small pieces of blue sky, crisp and soothing.

Other pieces are more than likely toxic: arguments, embarrassing moments where in front of my kids I acted more like a child than they did. Times when I exposed myself to someone in ways that I never wanted to be seen.

But I hold on to these as a reminder of where I've been, how far I've come and how much farther I need to go.

Recently, on Facebook, I had a discussion with some friends about happiness. I mentioned that I am leery of really happy people--those people who really and truly seem happy all of the time. Truthfully, I envy them, I watch them, I wonder how to become that kind of person. But then the demons come back, the dark spaces inside of me that I can't seem to really purge. When they appear, all thoughts of being anything other than who I am disappear.

And I want to disappear in that moment. I want to become something or someone other than myself. Only I'm locked inside that place that I can't leave.

At a grief conference I recently attended, MISS Foundation Mindful Grieving, there was a lot of discussion about remaining in the moment, being mindful of what was happening in that moment. Not falling prey to the monkey brain that we all are familiar with--leaping from thought to thought, not being present, unable to concentrate.

And I wonder if I spend more time remaining in the moment, will things get easier? Or harder? Will joy present itself more often or less often? Can I practice letting go of those demons so that they become distant memories of things past rather than things future?

I can't be anything other than what I am, in the moment, but I often exist in the past or the future and memories tug at me, pull me down. Instead, I'd like those memories to set me free, to give me permission to become something better, something larger than the memories themselves so that eventually I can let go of some things that create weightness rather than lightness.

And in that moment, I can be lifted up and fly.