I was young and scared. I earned my scars the same as I earned my seat at this table.
And I earned them the hard way. I earned my badges the same as most people do.
I found myself in the wake of my aftermath, and looking back, I found myself in the worry that I might not have the wherewithal to get back up and go at it again.
I can say this about my personal life.
I can say this about my professional life and, of course, I can definitely say this about my love life.

How do we recover from the unrecoverable?
How do we find what it takes to get back up and go back at life with all we have?
Full steam and straight ahead . . .

How do you say goodbye when the pain won’t go away?

I am what I assume is my best version of a normal, everyday, functional but dysfunctional person. I am no different from anyone else who lives and breathes.
I have fears. I have doubts. But I have dreams too. I have love in my heart. I have hopes that come from my soul and, like you or anyone else, I like to see beautiful things.

I have been on a course for a while now. I have changed and aged and I have grown. There are times when I slide backwards or as the old saying goes, there are days when I take one step forward and two steps back.
I have cut my nose off to spite my face or shot myself in the foot, so-to-speak. I have painted myself in corners and have certainly spoken out of turn and out of anger.

I often wonder . . .

If you could remove any concern or if you get rid yourself of any worry, then I would ask you what would it be?
What would it look like if there was no more irrational fear?
Yes, I say irrational fear because fear itself is not a problem, nor is fear problematic.
Fear is good.
Fear is healthy.
Fear is an excellent motivator too.

Fear can be the exact thing that pushes us to perform or to go, or be, or to do because one fear that can be the biggest of all is the fear of loss.

And so?
What do you do?
Stay and fight? Argue?
Live in the past?

This leads me up to my title of this journal.
How do people stop, drop, and let it go?

Who am I if I am too reluctant to release my grip?
Even better, who am I if I am nothing more than strung, like a puppet to my past, and caught in the confines of who am I or who is anyone for that matter?
Is this not life?
Is there not an obvious line between the past, the present, and the future?

How helpful is it to hold the people who hardly regard us, as in seldom or never, and how much do we invest in relationships that come with no return?
i think this is a valuable question.

This entry is from the heart. This is from the most special place I have, which I offer to you modestly. While this is small, I offer this because this is all that I have.

Can you see this?
This is my place. Right here.
Please allow me to explain:
This is my church and my sanctuary.

This is my place of healing. More to the point, this where I come to cast my secrets to the outgoing tides. I call this place mine but I understand that I do not own this, per se. However, this place is mine as much as it can be.

This is where I come to let the sound of the gulls, and the crying birds that circle above, act like the choir of the sea.
I view the crying seagulls like the peaceful organ players at church. Holy, holy, holy for though are with me. Or so I hope.

I am a man, at least this is what I have been told. I am a man of different sorts and different experiences. I am a man of whit and arm and someone with a modest version of charisma, 
or at least I hope so.

I have lived a life or should I say that, somehow, I have spun around the sun more than 52 times.
I have seen great things. I have been to great places. And I have seen sad things and been to sad places.
I have endured and survived. At times, I have lost my freedom to the battles of self. I have been beaten back or retreated and found myself amongst the rubble of my own aftermath.
I know all about the weapons of mass, self-destruction.

I come as I am.
This is me. Right here.

I agree, to each is their own. To each is their own life and yes, to each is their own mind, their own heart, and their own air to breathe.
Not to mention, of course, I say that to each is their own right to live up to their own standards. This is true.
To each is the right to live up to our own expectations.
Good or bad.
Pass or fail.
We all have the right to live, think, feel and believe as we choose to. We all have the right to live up to our own limitations, or to exceed them and surpass our best possible dreams and make them even better.

If I am here, and I mean if I am truly here, as in present and mindful and alive and in the moment, then I have to understand what it means to be in the moment. This means I have to understand my attachments or what it means to let them go.

I say this because there is an artform which I like to call mindfulness. I swear this is beautiful.
This is alive and well and possible within all things (a least I think so).
However, this is not to say that it is simple or that no training is involved. No, this is a practice. This is a process which we learn to enjoy and perfect over time.
There is a personal level of awareness, which we call enlightenment. Hence, this becomes an achievement that allows us to be free from the bondage of self-doubt and overthinking.

This is a great thing to do.
And yes, this is a great accomplishment.