Just like a child at the dinner table, I often feel as though I should be asking some unknown person or thing if I may please be excused from the table of unhappiness. I know I didn't clean my plate but please let me leave this table and go "outside" and play with everyone else. No body else's has been made them stay and lick the plate clean so why must I?
Often when we lose a loved one, we get caught in this cycle of sadness because it's hard to smile without them. Sometimes we feel we shouldn't be smiling yet. Guilt. Sometimes we feel as though we shouldn't smile without them, period, as though they might be looking down on us getting mad that we're having fun even though they are gone. I understand these feelings. I had them. I don't still have them, I know it's safe to smile even though my mom is gone, but somehow I got stuck at the dinner table and have not been allowed to go out and play with the other "happy" people. Unhappiness likes to keep me captive, until whatever it's dished up for me has been entirely eaten. And I'm not saying I LIVE in misery, I've cleaned my plate before, it's just that it's been filled back up before I was able to ask permission to be done with another helping.
Sometimes we just have to ask permission anyway. However unlike when we were children, it's not our parents from whom we are asking permission, and it's not life and it's not unhappiness who we have to ask. We have to ask the hardest person in the room to get a yes from. We have to ask ourselves. "Excuse me inner-self, but may I please be excused from the unhappiness? Will you please allow me to be free, to go outside and play without concern that you will come back?"
Under no circumstances do I have the answer. I feel as though I've asked myself over and over again and that my inner-self never wants me to leave the table because she keeps saying, "No." It seems so simple, just ask politely and be free. That SHOULD be how it works. I've been told maybe before, but somehow before I get to a full-fledged Yes, I keep getting more and more put on my plate. I guess sometimes we just have to ask and run away before we get the answer. Heck sometimes, maybe we just have to say "Hey look over there" and then run! I want to be care-free and happy, I think we all do. I want to give myself permission, I just haven't figured out how to say "yes" yet.
I have so many things that keep me from saying yes. So many judgments and rules and stipulations I give to myself that it's no wonder I haven't been able to leave yet. My plate is over-flowing and when I finally clear it, somehow I manage to pile on another generous helping of judgment or rules or standards that are too high to reach to take place of what I've already eaten. Maybe I've stopped asking; gotten too afraid of hearing no over and over again. Maybe it's time I asked again.
I feel like, as people who have had tough times in our lives, we have to consciously make a choice to ask. Some people never had to ask, they never had to sit down at our table filled with tough life situations. Some people finished their plate of unhappiness and never had a refill. That's not the case for me. So maybe it's time I asked again. Maybe it's time I made a commitment to leaving the table and not coming back. Maybe I should run away from this restaurant that keeps supplying with a never-ending portion and find a different restaurant. Maybe stop going to that restaurant. A "life" diet perhaps.
It's hard to make the choice. It's hard to leave "unhappiness" behind for fear that once you're finally free and happy that it might come back. But for people like me it's crucial to ask permission because without permission I will definitely not leave the table. Without permission I will just sit there, unhappily eating, wishing I were outside doing ANYTHING else. I don't know what I'll do once I choose to ask and to move forward with a yellow smiley face glued to my forehead, and I don't know how to take off that smiley face and replace it with a real, true whole-hearted smile, but I think it's time to try. Time to figure out a way to leave that crap behind. To start being happy with who I am, happy with who I want to be, with who I will become. It's time I start taking control of the things that "hold me back", the fears, the insecurities, the concerns and constant wife-like nagging that I do to myself. I have no idea what direction I'll run away in once I do get up and leave. No idea where to even find a map so that can get away from this table but I know it's time to say no the the extra portions I seem to be serving myself, to stand up, walk outside and keep walking in whatever direction I can go until that tiny table of unhappiness is long gone. In my past, out of my life. It's time I start trying harder to get away from this table. Ask until I give up and say, forget it, you're free, go play.
It's a terrifying idea. I've been at this table consistently for so long, I won't even know where to begin. But I do know that I can't start, can't leave this table without a conscious decision to do so, to at least try. Don't we owe that to ourselves, to at least try to get away from this table that keeps pulling us back from time to time, or that never really lets us leave? Haven't we had enough to hold us over for... ever? Don't we have a right to be outside playing too? I don't know how it will be accomplished, it's almost a guarantee it won't be easy. I don't think just excusing myself will free me from the judgments and rules and expectations I put on myself. I'm not sure I'll even know how to let go of all the things that keep me at the table. I have no idea what I'll do to make sure I don't come back but I do know one thing: It's time I asked for permission to enjoy life.
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