Internal Dialogue

How can you see into my eyes like open doors
Leading you down into my core
Where I’ve become so numb without a soul
My spirit sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home

–

Recently, during a conversation with a very good friend, I mentioned the importance of letting things go. I told this friend that in certain situations, it is better to admit defeat and accept something as a fact of life. To stop analyzing, to stop thinking about it, to just let it go – even when the situation in question seems totally undeserved or outright unfair.

It seems obvious that the more something means to us, the less we want to let it go. Even more so when it’s not about something touchable but rather something that upset us emotionally. Especially in these cases we often have a difficult time accepting it and moving on. We can even get mad. And to a certain extent, being mad isn’t that bad. It’s not so difficult to understand that a person needs to be mad from time to time. But especially with madness, you need to pick your battles. It’s difficult – I know – because madness blinds you. Even if you’re not really mad in the usual sense of the word, but more irritated, annoyed or distracted, it can still blind you. Every feeling can. And even when the issue seems insignificant compared to other things in life, it’s still important to just accept it and move on. Otherwise it will float around in your head for a very long time, even if you’re not fully aware of it.

But this is so typical me: I have the answers, but I don’t listen to them myself. In the recent past I’ve had my own confrontation with letting go. It was so important to me that I wrote several (protected) blogs about it, one of which entitled “About Letting Go”. Although I knew what I needed to do, I couldn’t. I can’t remember exactly what it was that kept me in the same position for weeks on end, but once I was in that circle, I couldn’t get out. Emotions are often so much stronger than reason. There’s a quote (from Max Payne 2) that I’ve come to appreciate, which goes: “The genius of the hole: no matter how much time you spend climbing out, you can still fall back down in an instant.”

I spent weeks trying to get out, and eventually I found a way. It wasn’t so much moving on as admitting to myself that it was pointless to keep thinking about it. That there was nothing else to do but let it go, that I had to accept it as a fact of life, something I couldn’t change. And once you do that, things start to fade incredibly fast.

Yet it felt so strange telling her to let go, to accept it, when I recently had such a difficult time letting go of something myself. But I knew I was right, because in the end I accepted it. I just wish someone would have told me. That’s why I said what I said.

She thanked me.

And I smiled.