Letting Go

I may not update this blog daily, but when I do update they tend to be long. This will be no exception.
Last night my coach asked me what it would take for me to 'let go'. I said I haven't been able to talk about my feelings on certain things, my brother's passing for example. She asked if talking would help and I said point blank: 'I don't know.'
Truth is, I don't know. I may not take every piece of advice given me and I may not always appear to be listening and 'following' the formula', whatever that formula may be. However, I do listen and even when I don't do something, if it was good advice or a good suggestion I tend to remember it long after it was spoken.
Lately, I have been letting go of SOME THINGS. Old emails even those written to the loves of my life *they know who they are*. I have let go easily and felt rather light afterwards to be honest. I've deleted old recipes and sent the good ones to another email address I have speciffically for saving such things.
I hung up with my coach last night and blasted The Boom Box Sessions and other outtakes from 1991's epic "NEVERMIND"!!
Part of me was pissed, affronted! I throw away half of my popcorn that was cold and no longer tasted good anyway! No, I'd have never thrown away milk chocolate. . . that's punishable by death! But the popcorn no longer tasted good and I was so angry not AT her, but at the thought of 'letting go' and the fact that there's no formula to follow I felt like crawling in a hole and hibernating for the rest of the winter!
Fast forward to today. It wasn't a particularly out of the ordinary day. I bought some SEETHER Tees' from the SEETHER Shop and went grocery shopping. I came home and punished Sadie for eating yet another thing, this time a gift, a puzzle to be speciffic!! I put her in the cage because it's to cold to keep her chained outside and as I emptied my trash in the big can in the kitchen the words: "This hurts me more than it hurts you. . ." popped into my head.
It really did. I know she suffered in a puppymill. I know they bred her ruthlessly and kept her confined to a cage otherwise. So of course, I thought: "How could you!!???" My only other option was spanking and I. am. not. a fan of spanking! That's not to say that I've NEVER spanked her, but I do it sparingly. As in I've had her since the day after Valentine's Day of 2009 and probably spanked her twice, maybe three times in that span.
Later in the day I got on the phone to listen to a couple issues of Rolling Stone and one of the first articles I read was on Amy Winehouse. Speciffically, the putting together of her posthumous album that came out December 6th. I started getting misty but I figured it was 'just one of those things'. I'm a sensitive person to begin with so I carried on reading. The next article I came across was a Q&A session with Michael Stipe on the end of R.E.M.
And low and behold I start weeping! Weeping! Over R.E.M!! Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some "Losing My Religion" or "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" or "Man On The Moon" or "Bang and Blame" or "Drive" or, one that always really spoke to me/the isolation of my childhood: "The Wrong Child"
"I will try to sing a happy song
I'll try and make a happy game to play
Come play with me I whispered to my new found friend
Tell me what it's like to go outside
I've never been
Tell me what it's like to just go outside
I've never been
And I never will."
"The Wrong Child" as written by William Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe
Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Thank Goddess for http://www.songmeanings.net/
!!
And now I'm really wondering: 'WTF???'
As I said their cool but they aren't my NIRVANA, though Michael def ranks up there with KURT! He just isn't typically 'the man' I'd be weeping over.
So how do all these incidents relate to letting go?
The end of R.E.M was finalized, official. There was a stamp placed on it. They've put out a final farewell album, their all still friends and life goes on.
Sadie's punishment ended. I let her out of the cage, took her out to go potty, brought her in and loved on her, fed her etc. She knows it's over. There was an ending.
Amy on the other hand left unfinished business. KURT left unfinished business.
Some of the things that have happened to me in my life have been left unfinished. My brother is dead and logically I KNOW he's dead. My HEAD, my BRAIN isn't disabled and uncomprehending. I KNOW he's gone. We held a Memorial Service and I eulogized him.
But there is no body and there was no body. We held a Memorial in Saginaw, he died in San Antonio and was cremated in San Antonio and his egg donor has some of his ashes. I have none.
Same situation with school in general. School SUCKED for me, whether it was attending school when I was a girl or going to the NFB center in LA. In the case of the center I went in feeling isolated and left feeling isolated.
The bigger picture here, is that in order for me to let go, I would have to stop being shunned and discriminated against. Meaning from here on out I would learn to do anything I didn't know how to do, IN OR AROUND MY HOME, where I feel comfortable. Where applicable of course. I couldn't learn to sky dive here at home! Or if I attended college I wouldn't, under any circumstances be told that my Notetaker was to noisy and I needed to 'leave the room' and take my test 'somewhere else' so the other students could have it quiet. Back in the day it was my Braille Writer that was to noisy and I'd be sent to the Science room where they kept all the chemicals for the lab to take my tests.
Also in an ideal world I would be given a PUBLIC apology and the schools *in chesaning* would not only apologize, but ADMIT guilt and neglect and start implementing school policies that would prevent other students from suffering what I did. Anyone who knows the whole story knows that being sent off to another room to take a test was the least of my problems though also damaging. The punching, kicking and spitting upon my person were in SOME ways much worse.
So, barring those things happening, WHAT ELSE would I need to 'let go'???
That's the $64,000,000 question and at this moment, I'm not sure I have the answer.
I know when I was listening to my coach talk last night what kept running through my head was a quote from the "Classic Albums: "NEVERMIND"" VH1 series.
"And I think what he found which is certainly true, I think of many successful people is that he became rich and famous and all the same things were still there. He was still from a divorced family, he still had difficult relationships with that family and he still struggled for his place in the world."--Unknown Person
So the next $64,000,000 question is am I going to end up like KURT COBAIN because I haven't found a way to let go of 'everything'? And when I say end up like, I could easily pose that question of anyone who hasn't let go of 'everything'. So I don't mean 'end up dead like' or anything similar.
I'm more inclined to believe that we let go of things as we age and as we figure out how, so I'm not 'doomed' however, there is a part of me that now feels threatened like: "If you won't release everything, this minute, then the Universe won't provide for you and your fate is sealed!"
NOT a good way to be thinking when I'm trying to get to a fabulous new year and putting it all on the line for said new year!