It's so hard to know (it's easy to learn) how to let go...
Last night I had a nightmare. I don't remember specifics, but it seemed neverending, and I kept finding myself running away from people who were trying to kill me. I woke up feeling somewhat terrified, lonely...wishing I had someone near me to hold me and help me back to sleep.
I don't have many nightmares...and I realized just now on my walk that the last person who held me and helped me back to sleep after one was my ex-husband. I am pretty sure it was the last kind thing he ever did for me. I remember he was sleeping on the floor of his hovel back then - the back room of the house that he trashed in his whatever-the-fuck-he-was-going-through haze - and I crawled to him after weeks of having not spoken to him (quite literally) and he held me and held me while I cried and cried.
I was thinking about that because suddenly he is making overtures towards being reasonable, and this scares me. And at the same time it scares me, it awakens hope within me. Damn fucking hope never did me any fucking good, but there it is. And while I am suspicious of his overtures, I am also a bit supicious of what I am sensing is a backlash in my unspoken reaction to his overtures.
It occurs to me that there is a great deal of safety in him acting like an ass. I benefit from an unhealthy dynamic by being allowed to have an exuse to be distant. That unhealthy dynamic is what destroyed our relationship - at least from my end - and if that dynamic goes away, I am faced with having to work through whatever feelings I have for him that preceded that unhealthy dynamic, without the benefit of that buffer of dis/ease.
Wow. That's a huge thought right there. How much do we hold each other in unhealthy patterns in order to resist having to feel scary feelings for each other? It's a concern in several relationships in my life where bearing witness to someone getting healthy means having to find a place for possibilities that weren't there when they were unhealthy. And, as much as I want everyone in my life to be healthy and to engage with me and the rest of the world in a healthy manner, the thought of having to sort through the feelings that arise as a result of those changes in behavior make me want to seek comfort in familiar arms - even if I have to crawl back into that stinky hovel to do so.
I have to resist that urge in order to allow the people I care about (past, present, and future tense) to get better. I have to learn how to let go. It's so hard to know, but it's easy to learn. And who really does know what will happen when I do?
***
Quote Devout Unquote
by Beauty Pill
Oh, show some shame!
Santa Clause, he died for your sins
Or was it the other way around?
Or was there someone else involved?
Facts, dates, and names
It's all the same
You never know
Are we sinking?
Are we diving?
You never know
Dog spit is cleaner than human
Same goes for cognition
Pain is pure, pain is fleeting
There's see and touch, smell and taste and listen
There's no "Objection! Asked answered!"
(Sustained! But it goes to the heart of motivation...)
You never know
There's no "black ops"
Yeah, nobody's reading your mail
No matte-finish helicopters to swoop down and snach you out of the habitrail
Just bulletpoints and bulletpoints
This ones "Pass"
This ones "Fail"
Are we sinking?
Are we diving?
You never know
Dog spit is cleaner than human
Same goes for cognition
Pain is pure, pain is fleeting
There's see and touch, smell and taste and listen
There's no "Objection! Asked answered!"
(Sustained! But it goes to the heart of motivation...)
You never know
It's so hard to know how to let go
It's easy to learn how to let go:
Just let go!
'Cause you never know
