Fifth Rant; Letting Go

Letting go seems to be a problem of mine. I tend to hold on to emotions for way too long. Now when it comes to stuff, Tangible objects, I can let go with a blink of the eye. Yet when I am caused pain, or have caused someone else pain, it eats away at me, it enters my brain like a cancer eating away all that is good and replacing it with bad.

Now I know we all have had our hard knocks, some people have had more hard knocks than others. I know that there are many people that move on and pass their failures, pass their hurts, pass their fears....but not I.

I cherish my cancer and feed it well, I give my cancer all the fuel it needs to grow and it grows, and grows till it takes over and the emotions are so strong that they become unbearable.

I have been questioning myself to why I hold on to negative emotions. I have wondered if I am an emotional masochist, or that I may use strong painful emotions as a muse, to my writing poetry and art. I wonder if it may have to do with feeling guilty, that maybe if I punish myself long enough I will be forgiven (by who? Sad but true, who is me).  

The one thing I hold on to with all that is me, the one thing that eats away at me, prevents me from moving on and being truly with another man, is the loss of my children’s father. I refuse to forgive myself for the day he died. I hold on to him, hoping I could bring him back. I hold on to the guilt of not doing enough the day he died. I hate myself, for not seeing that he was dying, for not calling 911 sooner. I keep on thinking if I did he would still be alive.

But fact is even if I called sooner it still would have been too late. His heart was failing after a night of smoking crack cocaine. There was too much in his system, he took his addiction to the edge of no return.

I remember like it was yesterday holding his head on my lap as he was dying (which I did not know at the time). I remember telling him...."love you have hit rock bottom" he acknowledging and agreed, neither of us realizing that this rock bottom was something he would never come back from.

I remember everything that happened that day, I remember every detail. Every time I play that tape in my head, I am reliving that day over, and over again. And funniest thing, I like it, even with all the pain I feel, it allows me to have him, even if it is in my head and the worst day of my life. Better that than nothing at all.

But I have been realizing, with in the past couple of months that by not letting go, I am unable to let anyone else in. I am punishing myself over and over and forgetting how to live, how to be with something real, something that is not a ghost.

I am though working on letting go, last night the day he died snuck up in my head, and I ask myself why? I thought about it and realized I hang on because I feel I have control over it. I tend to do it when I am feeling out of control. This time I stopped myself, I allowed the feeling to pass me by, let it seep through me and to my amazement it left as quick as it came.

That is one of the biggest things I hold on to. There are many little things as well, but I feel if I conquer this one, I can conquer the rest with ease. Most difficult first and the little ones will feel like nothing.