Letting go...

Source:jnkhoury.blogspot.co.uk

I’ve always had a problem with letting go.

I suffered a lot when I was 14 and forced to move away from the seaside resort I grew up in, to a ‘boring’ small town in the ‘middle of nowhere’ (in my own teenage words) after my parents’ marriage finally decomposed beyond repair. Having to leave my friends behind, the sweet linden infused summer nights when we used to go to the open air cinema, the salt on my skin, the sing song of the birds outside my windows, the toys I used to play with, the books I used to read (over and over again), having to let go of the only universe I had ever known was an experience I wish no teenager to go through. I spent most of my high-school years lamenting over the lost paradise of childhood, writing dark poetry and generally being resentful of everyone and everything.  

Think that’s when my pattern of refusal to let go started. I remember I cried that summer when I realised I wasn’t a child anymore and decided I wasn’t ready to grow up. My childhood's been a fuzzy mix of happy days (I was and generally am an extremely naturally happy person) and dark episodes of witnessing my father’s pshychologic abuse towards my mother and her fragile mental health manifesting itself in ways a child should not see. I was a child who was never told none of it was really my fault. I felt robbed of childhood and couldn’t accept it was gone, without me having a say in it, so I hold on to it for dear life. I got over it eventually but the process took a lot longer and somehow turned me into this person who keeps clinging to things and people like in a karmic Ferris wheel.  

This year has been a year of such breakthrough for me. I have broken so many destructive patterns, I have become so much more aware of the deep essence of things, so much more understanding, so much more nurturing towards myself, and that’s why I find it tough that, whenever I break a pattern, another one shows its ugly head.

One of the compulsive behaviours I’ve had for instance with men was wanting to end things on my terms, to speak my mind (or was it my mind I was speaking?...), to give myself a bloody closure. I can recall many embarrassing episodes of messages I sent men telling them off for leading me on and then apologising for my behaviour. Boy, I do apologise a lot. It’s like a freaking disease. I can also recall episodes of trying to lure them back into my life despite them having told me the game was off. And every single one of these episodes  left me more humiliated. Apparently, according to science, this is the way I was dealing in adulthood with my father’s 'abandonment'.

My father… My father was a pilot. He was beautiful, charming, clever and seductive. But he was also a very damaged person. But he was my father and I adored him. I think he adored me too. But he has never been equipped with the nurturing qualities a father should have. He was a victim of his own fears and insecurities and has never provided me with the love and protection a growing child needs. And he died when I was 18 so we were never able to talk about our relationship and make peace.

But somehow I resolved to forgive my father. I thought that would bring me the relief I’ve been looking for in my dealings with the world. And thankfully it did help me make extraordinary progress in my relationships so far. But I am not healed just yet. I think that possibly a piece of the puzzle is still missing: I have never resolved to mourn for myself, for the little girl whose childhood got stolen.

Even as I child, all I wanted to do was big myself up, become stronger, bolder, louder, smarter, as a way of dealing with loss rather than accept my vulnerability, feel the pain and move on. And I became this noisy person who’s not afraid of any external challenges life's throwing at me, but who, deep down, is terrified of being discarded and holds on to things until it hurts.

But there is still hope! It’s taken me many years but I am now finally able to let go. 

I'm letting go… Letting go…Letting go...