Letting It Go

It’s a heck of a thing to be able to walk away from the last word.

To close your mouth, push your tongue against the backs of your teeth, and to set your jaw firmly. Harder still when you feel, as most of us do from time to time, you have been wronged.

I HAVE BEEN WRONGED!

You want to scream it to the world, to call out those who have done you ill and to burn the earth around them and then salt it so nothing can grow for them again. The righteousness of the perceived transgression pushes to take hold of you and to pry open your mouth and let out all of the things you are compelled to say.

You have to say them

You have to drain the poison from your mind lest it slither into your heart and poison that.

The thing is…that poison, like the pain, is yours. While it’s for you to figure how to dispel it, it’s also yours to live with.

But why?

Why live with poison when it feels best to share it and to poison another?

To speak to the fact and not around it – there is a righteousness in pain and in being done wrong. Perception is always dependent upon who you ask, the person done wrong will tell a different tale than the person who was on the other side and the truth often lies in the gray emptiness between. Once you spread that poison, once you tell someone else the blackness that is in your heart you become as much of a villain as the person you feel did you wrong.

You will never be as eloquent, as intelligent, or as thoughtful as you imagine you will be once you open your mouth.

You’ll be singing a song of pain for someone who won’t hear it.

And finally, once you aim your angst and upset in the direction of someone else, whomever they are, you lose any claim to righteousness, you’re just another villain in a play filled with them.

No one wants to be fired, broken up with, ignored, cheated, or just simply done wrong and having to, no, CHOOSING, to swallow the feelings that come with something like that is a hard, hard road. But swallowing it down is the only way forward. Finding an outlet for it is the key. Finding a grave to bury it in, or a house to burn down around it, figuratively speaking. Or, if you are able, to find a place to bury it and a way to turn it into a forest to shade you in coming years.

But once you let it out, once you fail to let it go, you are suddenly as much a part of the problem as whatever it was that caused you to feel wronged.

And there’s the rub, as they say – the only way to move forward is to move slowly, deliberately, dragging that baggage behind you, until you can find the right way to process it and move on. Moving on doesn’t come with dragging someone down to where you are though when you are at your lowest. Getting over it, whatever it is, doesn’t come by digging down but by finding a way up. Some how. Some way.

The only way through is up.

So get climbing.

…c…