Feeling the Responsibility of the Process: A Lesson in Letting Go

Today is a practice in letting go. Just a bit ago, I watched my car round the bend into the snowy night and thought to myself, "There goes a small part of my story. May it arrive wherever it needs to be." Two friends are driving my car cross country to my sister in California, and a part of me rejoices in the experience of letting go of a huge material responsibility from my life, and the other yearns for the comfort, the symbolic gesture, that the object--my car--held. It wasn't just that it my car, but that it was a car that had faithfully transported me across a distance of nearly 40,000 miles. It was a gateway, a possibility, towards freedom. That responsibility, and that distance, is a significant amount of relationship-building. So I let go of the material.
 
Then, this afternoon, I discovered that my godmother (who had just been hospitalized for a neurological complication with a lupus flare), was now being further treated for a minor stroke and a subsequent closure of her dialysis shunt. So, I found myself once more preparing to let go of someone I love, if need be. I've been down this path before, and in my mind, letting go is not a gesture of giving up, but of letting be with love. So I held the person I love so dearly in my heart and I acknowledged that her physical presence--captured by voice, by touch, by ideas--may be painful to let go of, but that her spiritual one, the one that causes me to smile, will never leave. So I let go of the visible. Even if it is not now.
 
These past several months, I have been processing, advocating and closely carrying the house I live in, and one student in particular. It has been a blessing--because of the ways I have been compelled to grow--and a burden--because of the unhealthy balance I feel in myself. I acknowledge that I carry deeply in me those who seem to need me, or whom I feel somehow committed to. I acknowledge that I carry deeply in me the world, at times. And sometimes, I just let go. And tonight, I resisted over and over again the compulsion to get up and leave a meeting and a conversation. I resisted the desire to shrug my shoulders, to live into my guilt, into the responsibility, which I must acknowledge, for my errors, my opinions, my truths. How often, I found myself wondering, have I conflated my needs with others'? How often have I spoken for the group when, perhaps, I spoke for myself and assumed a similar experience? The question pained me, the need for the question pained me. And so while I may push through, a hole burns in my heart that, I know, will take longer to let go. The process of this experience has been a continual slap in my face, and at times a debilitating fire at the temples of my skull. I have stumbled through this trial; I have fumbled through the process; I, being who I am, carry with me the shame (is that the word that captures my sentiments? The regret? The loss? The aloneness?) that comes at times with the decisions I have made, or have advocated for. I become aware of how different I can be, of how diversity can both hinder and hurt, and I acknowledge that my way is not everyone's way, nor is it usually the right way. I may live with many others, but in this moment, few understand me at my core, and so I am alone. And I let go, I let go of what I think is right or wrong, of my anger, of my hurt. I let go because, in this process, it contributes very little to the health and wellbeing of others. My sense of place, or the responsibilities of place, are not wholly unwanted, but in this moment, they are bricks around my neck, dragging my shoulders painfully downwards. I let go, but it is gradual. And what I let go of is my pride.
 
Material. Visible. Pride.
 
In this moment, I share, feeling vulnerable to my own experience. When will I be able to sit, again, with certain people or with certain processes and not feel the overwhelming desire to just cry and say, "I give up"? So, instead, I make sacrifices, little tests of my willingness to continue through the fire, to continue through the markers of this trial. I give away that which gives me the most seeming freedom. I prepare for the aloneness that I may feel in the trial. And I humble myself, acknowledging my flaws, those which seem to be most apparent to me in the moment, and I prepare. This is only the beginning, I think, of the real trial. The tears nestle behind my eyes and I know, strength does not lie in stoicism, but in the willingness, and ability, to persevere, even when I stumble blindly in the dark.