I Wish I Could Hate You

I love poetry but don’t really like many poems. More on that later.

I did go through a poem writing phase in high school though. Who didn’t?

Most of them are garbage but I ran across one today while going through an old file that isn’t half bad.

It was inspired, like all good High School poetry is, by a girl who broke my heart.

Wish

I wish I could hate you, You broke my heart
I wish I could be mad at you 
For ripping my world apart
I wish I could ignore you, Forget you existed
I wish that it wasn’t but it is
And I’m pissed
I wish I could hate you, But I can’t let go inside
I wish I could run away 
Bring my pride, leave your side

I hate that I can’t hate you, I want to so bad
I hate that I can’t forget you 
Can’t get you out of my head
I hate that I can’t give up on you, My dumb ass keeps trying
I hate these damn tears 
But here I am crying
I hate settling for non-answers, I just want to know
I hate that I don’t hate you 
and that I can’t let you go

I struggled to move on from that heart break for a long time.  Mostly because it’s hard to process getting your heart broken, especially for the first time, but a lot because I just couldn’t let go.  Not being able to let go really hindered my ability to move on and grow as a person.

Looking back at my life I can unfortunately see a bit of a pattern. Holding on to things that should be let go of is a problem for me, and I think it’s a problem for most people.

Think about it.  We stay in abusive relationships.  We keep our closets stocked with clothes that don’t fit us and aren’t in style.  We look back and try incessantly to “re-live the glory days”.  We keep insane amounts of clutter.  We feed our habits and addictions when we know that feeding them only further imprisons us.

Why do we do this?

I think that one of the main reasons is fear. Fear of change, or fear of the unknown.

                               (Check out this post that I wrote about facing fears titled “Pee into the Wind”.)

While fear is a huge part of why we don’t let go, I think that it goes deeper.

The mistake that I’ve made for much of my life is that I try to diagnose myself logically when I should diagnose myself emotionally.

It didn’t make logical sense for me to still be in love with a girl that had led me on and then broken my heart, but it made perfect sense emotionally.  I was in love.

With hindsight being 20/20 and then adding what I hope is a bit of maturity, I can say that I was really only inlove with the idea of her.  But that idea was a happy, pretty, emotionally awesome thing to be in love with.  I didn’t want to let that go.

Now some things, are worth being held on to, but maybe today would be a good time to evaluate your life and ask yourself, “Am I holding on to something that is keeping me from achieving my goals?”

Maybe you are holding on to an overly idealized self-image, or a subconscious value that you no longer actually hold.  Maybe like High School Andrew, you are holding on to the idea of someone else and that ideal is making it harder for you to know them as they actually are.

Let me know what things you are holding on to in the comments and check back next week for a post all about how to actually let go.