The Hole in my Bucket

Anger, hate, fear, all that dark side mcshizzle, it's really hard stuff to deal with. Add self-doubt, resentment, frustration and impotence (whatever your negative emotion du jour might be) to the list and you can guarantee yourself a good dose of heartburn in no time at all. Well, I’m learning something. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing fancy. It is, however, something good. Something positive with which to cack on the faces of mine enemies, so to speak.

I’m learning to let shit go.

That’s right. The unwelcome memories, the uncomfortable feelings, all that doohickey comes into my head and, although I’m early on in my rehabilitation, it goes out again. Blows away like puffs of lovely breeze on a summer’s day …  yes, I’m full of crapola, I know you know it. That vajazzle “pops” into my head with about as much subtlety as a brick, stirs all the nonsense up like mad until I’m pounding all my metaphoricals against a good ol’ spiritual breeze block and losing grey matter like Henry’s bucket loses water.

And yet … it doesn’t so much. Not anymore. It’s hard work, but I’m starting to get what someone of my age should probably have been in possession of a great long while ago, and that’s perspective.

I’m starting to see all that shizzle for what it really is – nothing. Bygones are exactly that, recrimination is ultimately futile because you know what? Life is short. Shit happens, we do wrong, people wrong us, but life goes on. Life always goes on. One day I might be here, the next I could be gone. Why waste my time on stuff that really doesn’t matter, on stuff that realistically I can do nothing about? People will inevitably make their own judgements, have their own beliefs, their own interpretations, they will drag their own cart of human failings with them, and they will think of me what they will. I can’t do much about it. If I screech and whine that “you don’t know me” or  wotnot, I’m just going to look like an arse. If I bleat on about how you’re just as much to blame, or how you’re not perfect either, what does that achieve except to widen those ever decreasing circles?

The only thing we have is now. And I don’t want my now filled with the bitterness of remembrance past or futile desire. I just want to be. That’s right, my full stop is in the right place. I just want to be.

So when the bad egginess of life comes into my head, when I start to beat myself up about all the things I’ve let myself down about, all the people who’ve done me wrong, or all the things I coulda woulda shoulda, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to let it pass through my noggin and out into the ether. It might take me a while to get to grips with it, but do it I will. And you should too. Don’t let the world grab you by the balls and make you sick with the inappropriate graspage. Try to see other people's shit for what it is - theirs and ultimately pointless. It's just a pot of piss for them to niggle over while they forget to live. It's not easy; the better things are for us, the harder they seem to be. Letting go is tricksy to learn but I think once we have the hang of it, life will be much brighter.