Insurmountable Difficulty of Letting Go

Many times in life call for detachment, and I find of the struggles I face, letting go is something I find near impossible. If I love something I will grip onto it until my hands grow too weak to longer hold it. I’ve found this wiith people, and similarly with addictions.

Currently I am grappling with heartbreak. The need to move on from someone who, over a short period of time,  introduced me to a love I’d never felt before. I’ve been in relationships, but none like this. None where I truly wasn’t looking for the love that fell into my lap. If anything, I resisted at all costs. It was the first relationship I’d entered while also being deep in my grief. I thought it dangerous to allow myself to love and connect so deeply when I was so swallowed by the notion of temporality. Though still, I am a lover at heart and allowed myself to be enveloped in it. To experience the rich indulgence of being so insanely in love with someone. At its ending, I am once again faced with that same notion of temporality. Once again, detachment to me feels as though I’m peeling off my outer skin to reveal my insides. I don’t have the protection of that one person to rely on. We tried being friends, I had never tried being friends with an ex before of the understanding that it doesn’t work. There’s still pain there, love there, attraction, jealousy. There was no immense wrongdoing where I needed to cut myself off immediately. I really tried, but that love and pain and jealousy and attraction will not leave my body unless I am able to completely let go. This is what I’ve chosen to do. I’ve chosen to lay flat on my back, revealing my soft underbelly, exposing vulnerability to the world.

A few days ago, I relapsed after 5 years sober from narcotics. I won’t go into too much detail, but it was intense and totally overboard. Addiction is another thing I struggle to detach from. I was addicted to drugs for many of my teenage years, and I’m an alcoholic. I never figured out how to drink in ration. Some cultures grow up having wine at dinner as children. It can be seen as taboo, but I think that may have done me a great service, for my first exposure to alcohol having been a single glass of wine at dinner, or a single beer at a family party. Alcohol was very off limits to me as a child, but I still saw it being used around me. My first time drinking was at 13 with my best friend at the time. She went into her parents liquor cabinet, pouring small amounts of any bottle readily available into a water bottle. We walked around in the sunshine as daydrunk teenagers, holding eachother’s hands and laughing at our own silliness. It was innocent and it’s still bright in my memory, but it started a long line of similar patterns for me. Everything in excess. Buying entire bottles of vodka at 16 for me to split with a friend, the same drunken silliness, for myself I found an ability to be open in a way I’d never felt before. I craved the lack of control over myself, feeling that that was the ‘real me’. Continuing into adulthood, it became less silly and more dangerous as I made my way into bars, usually befriending a new character every night, going into random homes with not a thought in my mind about the dark possibilities surrounding such actions. It was the same thing when I relapsed. Meeting a random stranger at a bar and being so drunk and high that I couldn’t access my own reason. Luckily I came out fine, although my mom heard me on a phone call when I got home discussing the details of the night. I appreciate that she was more concerned than angry. She somehow sees potential in me that I don’t see in myself. Perhaps it’s the version she’s created of me having seen me as a child. But even before the unfortunate phone call that led to my mother discovering my relapse, it was exactly the kick in the ass I needed to realize I have to do better. The same way I’m detaching from my lost love, I am detaching from alcohol, and similarly drugs but that is more of a given, considering I regretted relapsing the second the sun came up. 

I haven’t been sober for long yet, it’s only been about 4 days, but I can feel it’s different this time. I was never really able to work on myself when I was drinking, I’d be going to work hungover just to reward myself a drink when I got home, and a drink is never really just ‘a drink’ with me (it’s at least 3), but I am taking action to better myself. I’d always say I want to work out drunkenly and then wake up the next day too tired to move, but starting yesterday I’ve implemented a workout routine. I’m going to be taking a 15 minute run and doing a 10 minute workout every other day. I did that yesterday and it felt incredible. I also read the whole of a nearly 300 page book, went to the grocery store, did some house chores, and watched the movie Uncut Gems (amazing movie by the way, why hasn’t Julia Fox been cast in more roles?). I plan to continue this pattern of doing activities that stimulate my brain and body to become comfortable with alone time, and more importantly, comfortable with myself. 

My mom told me that before devoting myself to another, I need to be okay with myself first. That stuck with me, and as it stands right now, I don’t want to be just ‘okay’ with myself. I want to be completely, unabashedly, and deeply in love with myself before even thinking about relationships again.

I have my friends, who I already love with a passion, to support me along the way, and now the next step is finding the same love and care I have for others within myself.