I Just Can't Let It Go

I took one of those little tours of my old hometown the other day. Drove by the old haunts, the park, the Teen Center, old schools and neighborhood. I probably shouldn’t have cuz I woke up in a little bit of a down mood and that, to me, is never a good time to revisit the past. Whenever I’m in this kind of mood and do this my head takes me through all those regrets I’m sure we all have at certain points but seem to be a regular visitor in my mind.

I drive by my old schools and can’t help but get down about how hard I tried not to try. See the old baseball fields I used to play on and can’t help but remember quitting simply because it became an effort that I wasn’t willing to give. I could go on and on about those times and places where I see a point where a simple change of a decision could have made drastic changes to where I am today. I know, we all have these regrets and I’m not alone. I just happen to be the kind of guy that thinks about these things more than most and it obviously doesn’t do me any good.

It was raining, and being the self-loathing idiot that I am, I took a walk around the park, leaving my umbrella in the car. Here’s a place that I, along with so many others, spent most of my teen years. Everything I saw and everyplace I went would take me to a memory of my youth along with questions of why I did what I did in each instance. Why didn’t I stay with everyone when they all decided to do this or that? Why’d I go home when everyone else wanted to hang out at the Bonfire? Analyzing each step I took reminded me of Shrink and I talking on numerous occasions. She’d always say. “It must be so exhausting just being you.” and she’s right.

Of course I had my IPOD and it was just running through a random set of songs. It’s funny how, and I’ve mentioned it before, songs sometimes just appear at the very moment they make the most sense. “Heart Of The Matter” started playing and it came to the verse:

"There are people in your life
who’ve come and gone.
They let you down.
You know, they hurt your pride.

You better put it all behind you babe,
cuz life goes on.
You keep carrying that anger
It’ll eat you up inside.”

That person whose come and gone more times than I could ever count is me. I find it so hard to put it all behind me and move on, always have. I try though. I swear I do. Shrink’s right, it really is exhausting.

The song itself is about forgiveness. In this case it’s me that needs to forgive myself and that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.