Letting Go

sea ocean rocks waves — Photo by Gratisography on Pexels.com

I’ve been “weaning” myself off of attachments: things, people, “needs”, expectations, assumptions… there may be other ways to characterize what it is I’m letting go of, but what they all have in common is that I have, up until the past year or two, sustained within myself the idea that I can/ should/ want to remain closely connected or interacting with the object(s) of my “attachment.” But now I recognize I don’t want to remain connected, and I actually need to let go.

I tend to be loyal. I tend to become attached. Sometimes it’s just a habitual way of being. Sometimes I consciously embrace what Is, and then continue to build relationship with what/whom-ever I’ve embraced. However, I am also fiercely independent. I enjoy self-determination. I enjoy letting go!

So, sometimes when I realize it’s time to make room in my life for new growth, and I feel the need to let go of emotional investment in things and relationships from the past, I can feel tremendous internal struggle. This is partly because I feel “disloyal” when I let go, and loyalty seems to be a deeply internalized virtue for me. However, I think it is also partly because I fear hurting other people’s feelings or dispelling others’ expectations. Fear is part of the scenario because I know my way of doing things doesn’t always meet with other people’s needs.

I often identify with water when I try to understand my internal metamorphosis. I can enjoy being a drop in the ocean. I can revel in the bliss of communing with a great expanse of likeness, something that is like me but far more than myself. But I can also delight in being a droplet that lifts up on a frothy wave and rides the wind until she joins a cloud floating to new worlds. I can even savor the sacred tension of being a raindrop – one who falls and splashes for others’ nurturing. At the moment, I think I long to be mist, sometimes low-flying fog, sometimes haze, sometimes joining rising clouds, but she who is in transition, exploring, between states of being, promising nothing, just moving, flowing, just being and becoming.

Yes. It is challenging for me to dare to admit this is how I want to be. Yet this is how I Am. This Is who and how I am now, and I embrace her!