Letting go

I’m not good at letting go.

I still have my pointe shoes from when I was 18. I have the guitar my parents bought me when I was 12. I have way too much stuff around my apartment from the various shows and films I’ve done over the years.

I’m not good at letting go.

I still have the video somewhere from my first wedding. I think I might even still have the wedding album. I even have notes my first husband sent me after we split up.

Not good at letting go.

And when the various pieces of my heart left me behind, that was even more difficult to let go. Months of crying over them, my heart broken and shattered on the floor.

I hung on to the anger over my second husband for a very long time. It was easy. There was a lot of anger.

Bags of teddy bears in my closet.

Not good at letting go.

Of anything.

But the lesson I’ve been learning lately is that I have to.

Let go.

Of everything.

Having cancer is the biggest lesson in letting go one can have.

You can’t hang on to anything when you have cancer. You just simply can’t because you’re just trying to get by.

You let go of your control. There is so much going on and so much information and so many choices to make that you have to let go and follow where your treatment takes you.

You let go of your vanity. Losing your hair is inevitable. But no one tells you about losing your eyebrows and eyelashes and… other hair. It’s weird. It’s odd. But you have to let go because you can’t do anything about it.

You let go of having anything that feels like normal because nothing is normal anymore. And coming out of treatment, there is a new normal to be established because you can’t go back to who you were before. You have to let it go.

And I’m not good at letting go.

But I’m learning.

For someone who has spent her whole life playing with an emotional Rubik’s cube, feeling like I have to have every angle figured out and know how to respond to any possible variation in any situation, letting go of that control is almost impossible.

But I’m learning.

It began with the Filmmaker. I didn’t have to figure things out with him because there was nothing to figure out. He is exactly who he is and I didn’t have to anticipate which bomb was going to go off if I did something wrong. It was simple and I’d never had that before.

And I began to let go.

I stopped trying to figure out how to make him happy because he was happy. Which let me be free to be happy. I stopped playing with the Rubik’s cube and put it away because I didn’t need it anymore.

I let it go.

And it helped me to realize that I cannot control things around me. I don’t have to anticipate and be perfect and figure out every angle on everything all the time. I don’t have to do it with someone I care about. I don’t have to do it with my treatment. I don’t have to do it with anything in my life.

I can let go.

I can let go of him. Let him go. Not worry about if and when and what. Because I don’t know and I can’t control it or him or us. I can only follow my heart and do what it tells me. And right now, it says let go. Say good-bye. Wish him well. Accept that he’s out of my life and probably won’t come back. And let go of that pain and hurt.

I can let go of fear. There has been so much fear going through treatment. So much I don’t know, so much I can’t figure out. And now that I’m getting to the end of it, I can let go. I don’t know if this is it and my cancer will never come back. But I can’t control that. So I’m letting go.

I can let go of not knowing. I’ve always held on to not knowing, held on to trying to figure out the future, where I’m going, what’s going to happen. But I don’t know. And the more I try to hang on to something that’s not there, the harder it is. I can let go.

And I can let go of my life. Stop trying to be everything and do everything and show everyone how amazing I can be. Let go. Accept that, for a while, I can’t be and do and have everything. Just take what each day gives me until I get back on my feet. And even then, accept that each day gives me what I need and stop there. Let go.

I can let go of my past. There’s nothing there that’s going to do me any good now. I’ve looked at all of it and analyzed it and figured a lot of it out. And what hasn’t been figured out yet doesn’t matter. It’ll get there. I can let go of the anger and the pain and all of the bullshit. It happened. It hurt. It almost killed me. But I’m still here and I’m still standing so I can let it all go. Take the lessons and leave the rest.

Let go.

Let go.

Let go.