Let It Go, Let It Go...

“…so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other.”
--Charles Bukowski

I know Buk was talking about women in the above quote, but I think it applies for me. I hope that I don’t cause offense by using the truncated quote out of context.

I need to let go of a lot of shit.

So, it being four weeks into the classes, I’m no longer as apprehensive as I first was. No surprises have been found. But like someone watching their best friend or sibling become a parent, you have no real idea what the life is like until you’re in it yourself.

Of course, in this case, I’m the one that’ll be doing the spit-up after a meal.

Food. Yes, everyone knows and immediately thinks of the surrender of beloved comfort foods and drinks. Goodbye pasta! Farewell fizzy drinks! Au Revoir alcohol! (For at least a year—your mileage may vary…) Ciao soups!

Sigh.

So, that’s it, right? I have one, maybe two, last tours of old battlefields, smoky steakhouses and quaint French bistros before I graciously trade my gourmand pleasures for smooth sailing into the sunset.

Yeah. Right.

No matter how much I’d like to believe that my biggest challenge will be going cold turkey from Dr. Pepper, I know that the biggest gorilla in the cage is my brain and its way of processing the world—and right now it’s eyeballing me like I’m an old piece of Samsonite luggage.

Over the years it has developed survival strategies for getting me through all kinds of times, good and bad. A lot of my coping strategies and socialization tools involve the use of food and drink as props. And anyone who knows me knows I love to be on stage delivering yet another tedious monologue—and what kind of performer would I be without my trusty props?

However, as I look deeper into my mottled soul I see, at least from my paranoid perspective, there are a number of hobgoblins lurking in the shadows sneering and gibing me.

I should clarify that statement.

Granted I’m a middle-aged man of relatively respectable physical stature and I carry my weight reasonably well, all things considered. Basically, people, in general, don’t fuck with me. At least not to my face. Anymore. But that’s another story… However, I don’t carry it well enough to escape being labeled as having ‘let myself go.’ Because, truth be told, I have. But, in my defense, it’s complicated.

In other words, there’s more than a few self-esteem issues here.

The particular drain I’m circling here has a name: shame. And the garbage disposal past the black rubber sphincter is yawning open, blades whirling and chattering at me.

It’s surprising how much shame is tied up in this whole situation. A metric fuckton of it, if you will. It’s everywhere! It’s like stepping in dog shit and then walking through most of your house before it finally hits you that something's terribly wrong… and you’ve no one to blame but yourself. So you end up cancelling whatever plans you may have had (and suddenly became very attached to) and you end up down on your knees trying to abate smears of canine soft-serve out of your carpeting, and clothing if you’ve really gone to town.

Shame smells about as good as dog shit—but I’m not going to find out if the taste is as horrible, although I suspect it is.

I have been around long enough to know that when you find yourself in a tough situation you really want to get out of, you have to change the conditions that got you there. For me, I cannot blame one thing in particular, because it is truly an aggregate of conditions and choices. Yes, I will proclaim that sometimes shit happens—but I cannot deny that I walked my happy ass down this path.

And here is where it gets tough. I have to let go of the shame. Shame of being (or at least looking) slothful. Of letting myself devolve to this state. Of having to use such an extreme measure as surgery to try and remediate my physical state. Of surrendering a normal life because I couldn’t hack it any other way. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam...

I’ve got to let go. And I strongly suspect that I will make this as easy or as worse as I truly wish for it to be. To get a better context of what I mean by that, watch the old Tarkovsky film, “Stalker.”

I have to let go. And I know I can. And on my own terms—to a certain extent.

Because if I don’t, I will still have to let go.

Of everything.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

--William Ernest Henley