Spiraling UP...

Right now, Just for Today, I feel like I'm in the exact same place I was when I started this blog several years ago. I'm still dealing with unresolved issues with my blood father whom I haven't seen in a decade. Yet, I'm not spiritually in the same place. I've made a lot of progress. For example, this morning when I woke up earlier than usual, feeling down, I decided to change my mood through serious step work.

Because I am feeling powerless over this particular relationship, I worked on Step One. I found the perfect reading in Al-Anon's newest book, Discovering Choices - the introduction to the chapter on detachment. It became clear to me that I was still attempting to control another person, to fix him and the relationship. Even though I haven't done anything outwardly, I spend too much thinking it about it, thinking that I should do something to fix it.

I had to ask God to help me let go of my wanting to control, to surrender, which I thought I had done but apparently not 100%. Will I ever be able to do it 100%? I don't know, but I can continue to ask and continue to release it. I don't have to let it bring me down. I don't need to spiral downward like I have so many other times. Instead, I can spiral upwards towards my goal of serenity. I can invest my time in things I can do and things I want to do.

Just for Today.

To the Parent I Hardly Knew

I have a few memories
as a child—your letting go
of my bike seat, not letting me know,
letting me think you were there
holding me up, while all along
I was on my own,
like I would soon be.
And you buying me the gray
stuffed poodle for my birthday,
the one I left outside in the rain,
ruining it—I remember peering
through the window, seeing it
in the far corner of the yard,
just like I had first spied it
through the window of the drugstore,
on that first visitation weekend
we would have after the divorce.
One of the few we would have,
for it was that same year you would
say goodbye, telling me you were
moving to another state and you
wouldn’t see me much—little
did we know that would be the
last time, until I was grown.
Even then, the visits were short, just
a few days in the summer—hardly
enough to rebuild a relationship
broken by years of silence,
that have now turned into months
we don’t speak, and years
we don’t see each other, again.
So now it is time, perhaps the last,
that we’ll meet face-to-face—
it’s time for me to truly forgive you,
time for me to at last, let you go—
the parent I hardly knew.

©2006 Al-Anon Lifer