What can you do when you’ve
done all you can do? What can you do if
you can’t fix it, change it, or make it better?
The best thing one can do in such situations is to evaluate what you are
left with and realize that letting it go would most likely be the only option
worth investigating further.
It is very hard to do…I know,
I’ve had to do it. Two times in my life
I’ve come to realize that no matter the effort or trial of new tactics there are times that nothing will make
a situation any better than what it is…the old “it is what it is” then comes
into play.
Two examples of this in my
own life show this easily. I know I did
the hard thing, but I also know I did the right thing.
I found myself, in my
mid-40’s married to someone who had done something that saddened me to the
deepest pocket of my soul. I thought,
through my faith, I could let that hurt go, trust him again, learn to love him
again. No matter how I tried to fix it,
change it or make it better, I learned I could not. I fought these feelings for ten long, sad
years. One day he said something to me
that let me know I never would be able to fix it, change it or make it better,
and so…I let him go. Actually I left, but
it was one of the biggest decisions of my life.
One of the hardest too. It was
also one of the best for me. I look back
now and wish him only good things, but know I did the right thing, and likely
did it at the right time, for me.
I birthed two children. Two boys. How I loved those boys. Early on in their childhood I was a very strict disciplinarian and let my anger dictate how I punished. This was how I was punished as a child and one day I realized, I was doing to the loves of my life, what I had had done to me. I stopped. Cold turkey, stopped. Oh, sure there were times I would slip back into it in small ways, but they were SMALL ways. In that time I made sure they both had the things they needed, knew they were adored, were active, drove them everywhere and loved their joy in the things that made them happy.
Just prior to leaving their
father, child number two tells me that he remembers me doing any number of
horrific things to him. I remember being
harsh, but the things he relayed as things he remembered…well, I did rage a
good deal, but had I done the things he described...there would have been evidence to
see. I apologized in an email to him
anyway, as he truly believes these things happened and no amount of my denial
or reasoning would have made any difference.
We seemed to do well for a while thereafter until out of the blue one
day he began telling me to never speak to him again.
Recently I find that this person
has begun cyberstalking me and putting out very real information on me on sites
I used to visit and no longer do. In
these he publicly accuses me of all the things he says he remembers. Had friends not called me to warn me that
some “sicko” was writing things about me, they’d still be out there. That this sicko was my own son is hard to fathom. Should it happen again, I will in all
likelihood have to report him to the authorities.
No more would I cry for this
person. No more would I suffer that he
was just down the road at his father’s on holidays, no more would I long for
him. I can’t fix it, I cannot change it,
I cannot make it better, and so when he well and truly severed that umbilical
cord I felt an odd sense of relief. I’d
tried. I’d tried again. I’ve stopped trying or worrying over it. It was the right thing to do for me.
I’d say that sometimes,
giving up is freeing. I’d say that
sometimes it brings clarity. I’d say
that giving up sometimes gives us ourselves back. I’d say that saying “enough” lets us close
the door on things we can’t win, and opens it to things we can.
All in all, not a bad
proposition!
