Giving Up is Hard to Do

I give up.

I don’t want to help you anymore.

I don’t want to enable your disgusting habit of self-inflicted negativity and the ease of which you slide into it every time the circumstances lack perfection. You always seem to be waiting for the perfect circumstances: the perfect time, the perfect person, the perfect tone. The imperfections in the circumstances are what reveal perfection in us. The ability to adapt is this perfection. It’s inside of each of us and is revealed only through self-inquisition, self-reflection, and true revelation. Give me any situation and I will succeed. I don’t necessarily know what I’m going to do when I get there, but I know that when I get there, I’ll know what to do.

But you don’t believe this. You don’t believe in yourself. You lack a kind eye when reviewing your inner workings. You lack the self-love that is needed to overcome the irrational fear that envelops your soul. And I have tried so hard to show you that fear is a waste. I’ve tried to lead by example, to speak with you, to ask you questions, encourage you to reveal the truth within your insecurities. And I can’t do it any more. I can’t take your resistance. I can’t take your desire to wallow in your own misery. And to bring me with you. To twist the goodness of the world into a knotted, dreary, mess of cables curling on the frozen tundra. I can’t do it anymore.

Perhaps this is simply my weakness. Perhaps I don’t have the mettle to support the weight of this darkness. Perhaps it is just always my responsibility to make things right; to shine the light. I can’t do it anymore.

I give up.

The limitations you see are invisible to me, but the opposition to growth inside of your heart is all too clear. I was once afraid. I was once lost. I was once the picture of angst and insecurity. And I hated myself for it. And I pushed so much love away. I was too frightened and too insecure to open my heart to love and honesty; to undeniable truth. I forced love away because I didn’t know how to process it or how to receive it. I poisoned myself with fear. Fear to love, to be loved, to be seen for who I was. Because I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t recognize that my core is pure love. I couldn’t recognize it because surrounding that core was a thick, swollen, scaly layer of fear. A fear so strong, so deep, that the infinite light of love at my core only escaped through tiny cracks lovingly pierced by kind souls who had the time and patience to reveal a better way through life. They revealed that only love exists in this world. And the thick, swollen, scaly layer of fear is a false belief, an irrational and imaginary cloak that does nothing to protect us, but actually exposes us to the debilitating and deflating self-imposed ideas that we are ugly and unworthy and limited and useless and untalented and empty and above all, unlovable. And this is false. This is all a fallacy. It’s a fictional universe that exists only in our minds. It has no basis in the reality in which we live. It is putrid.

So I decided I would see the world for what it is. And see myself for who I am. Uncover the core of love that had been hidden beneath the cracked rubble of fear for so long. Let the rails of light break through the settling dust and illuminate the faces of those around me. Share the reality of our limitless potential and encourage digging deep to unveil the unending fountains of love that exist within every one of us. Explore goodness and truth with a fervor that only children seem to grasp. Eliminate the fearful poison that forms in me as frightened thoughts and destructive inactions. Let go of my rigid and immovable beliefs rooted in fear and flow fluidly through the river of gracious impermanence and loving guidance.

This is the only way. Doing my best, with an open heart, a gracious mind, and a forgiving attitude is the only way. Doing my best is the only option. It’s the only way I can live truly, happily, and with gratitude. And I want you to come with me.

But I won’t wait for you any longer.

I can’t.

I give up.