Teach me how to let go

I keep a notebook, where I write ideas about blogging and while there were a lot of these ideas written down, I had no power to write in the past year or so, the muse did not visit me and I was stuck in the peculiar, the everyday, the little things, the wrong emotions.

As far as I remember, it all started in the summer of 2012 - the starting point of a series of events that were unexpectedly horrific and to a certain extent distressing. Slowly but steadily I could not enjoy anything, as I was too preoccupied with being worried. The more worried I was, the more things were going wrong. I even reached the point where I could predict how people would hurt me. People kept on failing me in both professional and personal life and I was so easily manipulated by their emotions. For example, when my friend X was happy we could enjoy a nice conversation and I was happy too. Then, my friend X would become rude to me out of the sudden and I would get hurt and become sad. I could not believe why people need to behave in such ways…what’s the whole point of living an inauthentic life after all? Trying to be an optimist in the greatest pessimistic period of my life, I was thinking of my “Hall of Fame” people, i.e. my boyfriend, my best friends and family, and that’s how I kept going.  Quotes did help too. Winston Churchill once said “If you go through Hell, keep going”. And so did I. 

One day, I was talking to my best friend, Nina, and I told her “Nina, what I really desire is to become this calm and serene person who will be so kind and give so much love to everybody, without being hurt by deleterious and harmful behaviours - just keep being in a positive state of calmness.”

And that was my first step to a better, more informed me. While until then, I could not believe how people could have behaved in the past, that was the time when I accepted that the past year was quite ugly. Worse than what others may have experienced, but also better than many others too. And then, I was grateful. I was grateful for all the good people in my life, my good health, my inner strength… I was grateful for so many and so much!

Of course things did not become suddenly amazing nor am I at the moment the calmest person on earth. The same people kept on behaving in the same way, and while I knew that I needed to change my attitude in order to become the person I aspired to be, I did not know how. I thought to stop talking to them. Yet, I couldn’t. With some people you have to keep a relationship, be that professional reasons, be that social pressure. Then I thought not to care about them. But that’s not who I am. The authentic me always cares, always gives.