Stuck

A Letter to the Past Me:

I see you, sitting there wondering what keeps you stuck. What prevents you from fully feeling your grief, from sitting with it and looking at it in the face? What stands in your way of moving through your deepest pain and sadness? What keeps you holding onto your darkest hurts? Even as time pulls you ahead, what keeps you clinging to the torn shreds, the scraps of your past pain? Why can’t you let it go? Why can’t you simply put it down and walk away? Why do you hold onto your grief so fiercely, like it’s a buoy keeping you afloat when it is really the anchor weighing you down, pulling you further and further into the depths of your loneliness, your isolation, your sadness, your hopelessness?

I think it’s shame. Shame is keeping you right where you are. It keeps you clinging and sinking. It keeps you in the darkness, afraid and lonely, convinced you are where you belong; certain you are unreachable, un-savable. You can’t admit your pain, don’t ask for the help you so desperately need, won’t seek the empathy and connection that could pull you up, out of the depths and darkness and into the light. And because of that, you feel all the more alone, all the more ashamed; because without admitting or asking for help or reaching out to others, you are left believing your flaws and mistakes and shortcomings are different from everyone else around you. The more you hide, the more you stay in your dark cocoon of pain and worry, the deeper your shame grows. And at its root, its core, your shame is really fear – the fear you are not enough, that you are unworthy of love and belonging, the fear that you deserve to suffer alone. 

I see you trapped in that suffering, in your sense of loss, of abandonment, of obligation, of loneliness, of lost hope. I see your anger and your deep, crushing sadness. And I see how you seem to feel stuck, unable to move one way or another. You feel weighed down by your grief; but you simultaneously feel afraid to let it go. You fear that letting go would sink you further into the depths that already drown you. You wonder: if you’re feeling trapped under the weight of your pain now, how much heavier would it feel if you added more loss and all of its attendant guilt?

Or maybe it’s not the heaviness of letting go that scares you, but the weightlessness of it. Maybe you’re afraid that letting go will leave you with a feeling of emptiness that feels worse than the weight of your sadness. Or you’re convinced it’s the only thing keeping you tethered to your life, to your world, and to let go would be tantamount to drifting off into the ether of nothingness, as you give up the only tangible thing you feel you have left to hold onto. Maybe you even feel that your pain is the thing that gives meaning to your life, and to let it go would be to remove any sense of import and purpose.

Or maybe, combined with all of that, you feel you can’t let go because you can’t even imagine what the other side of this pain could possibly look like. While you can sense, deeply within yourself, that you want a life that feels like more – more joy, more contentment, more peace, more of whatever it is you need to feel alive again – you cannot begin to fathom how that would look, how you could possibly move from where you are now to something that is different, that is simply not this.

And even deeper than that, your shame won’t allow you to see yourself as worthy of imagining the possibility. Something tells you that it would be selfish to dare think about charting a course different from the one you feel trapped in now. You’ve learned along the way to be selfless, to always put others first, their comfort and happiness always above your own, and you cannot bring yourself to make waves in anyone else’s waters. 

But I’ve seen future you. 

I know that you not only can let go of the pain, you will.

You will sit with your pain and stare into its face even when it is uncomfortable, especially when it is uncomfortable. 

You will shine light onto your shame, and it will shrink. And the more light you shine on it – the more you refuse to hide in the dark because of it – the more it will shrink and the less power it will have over you.

You will give words to the feelings that for so long have gone unspoken. 

You will nurture yourself with sunlight and joy and safety and trust and travel and work and friendship and family. 

You will buy yourself flowers, often.

You will tell yourself, over and over and over again until you finally begin to believe it, that you are enough, that you are worthy and you are loved and you belong, that you deserve to feel joy.

You will spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in therapy. And it will be worth every second and every penny.

You will feel overwhelming guilt for all of the ways you have fallen short and hurt those you love.

You will begin to forgive yourself. 

You will extend forgiveness and grace to others who have hurt you even as they were doing their very best.

You will open your heart up to love and get your heart broken. And then you will open your heart again, even without guarantees that there won’t be more heartbreak. You will realize that love is never, ever, wasted. 

You will chart a course that, though scary at first, will begin to feel familiar beneath your feet as you walk it.

You will begin to understand that the best way to really show up for others in your life is to first start really showing up for yourself.

You will begin to make your choices with intention, even clarity, about what you want and need in life rather than simply accepting whatever is in front of you.

You will begin to choose joy. 

You will choose to be present, even in your pain, even in your joy, over distracting and numbing. 

You will cry and feel all of the sharp, unrelenting pain of your sadness and wish it would just go away.

You will try to be patient and to learn that there is joy in the waiting.

You will embrace faith and hope as you accept you will never have all of the answers, will never be able to imagine how it will all turn out. And you will keep taking the next step even when you fear the ground will be yanked out from under you. 

And sometimes, the ground will be yanked out from under you. 

You will drag yourself back up onto the sand, out of the deepest parts of your pain and sadness only to be hit by another wave that knocks you over and drags you back into the depths once more.

You will keep dragging yourself back up onto the sand.

Know this:

Letting go of what you’re holding onto will not drown you, and it will not send you floating off into nothingness. You will rise and you will fall, over and over again; but you will begin to see the beauty in both the light and the darkness. The end of your clinging, of your holding on, will not leave you feeling devoid of meaning. Instead, learning to let go will leave you feeling a deep sense of purpose in taking all that you’ve overcome, all you’ve learned through these experiences of pain and grief, and alchemizing them into something you can carry with acceptance and even a little pride.