The Chelsey Diaries

Take a deep breath.
Say your words precisely, with force, but gentle too. No one’s gonna leave unscathed but if you can, try to not let your words be the deepest wound.
Take a deep breath
Walk away until you are out of sight and then exhale slowly.
That’s when it will hit you; knock you off your feet. That’s when it will feel like the entire world is coming down again, and again. Over and over.
That’s when it will be done. That’s when you do what you didn’t want to do, what you have fought so hard not to do.
That’s when you will let go.

Letting go is tricky. It plays on all sides of all coins. The thought of letting go of something gives us both the anticipation of freedom and the fear of loss. It lets us breathe and it takes our breath away. How do we know when letting go is the right thing to do when it can feel so incredibly wrong?
When Mother’s day sucker punched me in the throat this year, I had the feeling start creeping up my spine. You know, the one that says “what are you even doing?” the one that makes your heart sink into your stomach with no warning or cause? The one that takes inventory of your life through shit coloured glasses and weaves its way into your brain like a drug, destroying each cell of self-assuredness that it comes into contact with? You probably know it by its street name; Doubt.
Doubt is a tiny little asshole that deserves none of your attention and yet demands it in it’s entirety. It has no basis; it has no supporting documents. All it has are convoluted hypotheses of despair, failure, loneliness, pain and self destruction. That’s all.  Doubt is the Donald Trump of emotions. It doesn’t actually know what it’s doing, mostly just promotes fear and like a bunch of dumb dumbs the human race keeps letting it influence us.
When we start wading into the lake of possibilities, doubt is the blood sucking leach that attaches between our toes compelling us to run out of the water and straight to our mommies. It gives us fear of that water.
What we want to do, and what we actually do are divided by one thing and one thing only. Doubt. Doubt that leads us to be fearful and unsure. To use our pragmatic minds to come up with some bullshit ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ list so that we can justify turning down our dreams.
Let me show you how a ‘Pros/Cons’ list should Look

 PRO     
I want to                                            

  CON
*insert erected middle finger here*

Right? So why doesn’t it? Why won’t we flip doubt the bird and say “What if I don’t? How about, What if I do?” or “what if I fail? But what if I SUCCEED.” and of course “what If Ill be Lonely? But what if someone better is waiting to find me!!”
LET GO of the doubt, LET GO of the nay sayers, the Debbie downers, the unfixable relationships, the job that brings you down the path of the life you don’t want to lead. just stop for a moment and say good bye to the things that drain your soul of hope and love and courage and faith.

TAKE A BREATH AND LET IT GO. Cuz it’s just that easy… right?

I let go of something recently, that I’ve been almost unknowingly digging my claws into.  I’ve held on so tightly and, to be honest, I’m not even sure what I was holding on FOR. It was a blankey; a safety net.  It was (or so I thought) the last shred of something important.  The last bit that I could hold onto and then maybe it wouldn’t be so hard.  Maybe, in some way, the past could become part of the present and future.   But as I let go I realized that it could not. I think I knew all along but it was making the conscious decision to unravel the blankey, to cut loose the safety net, that jolted me into the REALITY that I am fine.  And just because I let go, it doesn’t mean I’m disregarding, forgetting and ignoring it. It’s just… not active. I’ve taken what I’ve needed, my heart will always keep what is precious tucked safely away.  But if I keep holding on I’ll prevent myself from being catapulted forward into the stars (Which is exactly where I want to be).

So I let go.

And it took my breath away.  I felt crippled and torn.
I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff leaning forward and the rope that was tied around my waist was cut and I was teetering with this new feeling of lightness from the resistance dissipating, about to lose to gravity and I closed my eyes and let that feeling take me as I started to fall…  

But when my eyes opened and I was still sitting in my living room, holding my glass of wine with my feet firmly planted on the ground, I exhaled.
The world didn’t crumble.
The sky didn’t fall.
All was still as it was and the fondness of the past still remained.  But the tether was gone. And I felt like I could move around with ease carrying my weight and my weight alone.

BUT because hindsight is the torturous and wonderful beast that it is, it showed me the process.
Letting go wasn’t just “I’M DONE” and then I dusted my hands off and walked away. But more “I should probably.. okay maybe later.”
“okay I definitely need to..ugh  i’ll do it tomorrow” and
“i’m done, just kidding” (x100) until I could get to the point where I am confident that the chord has been cut. And it. Was. Not. Easy. But I did it. I fell and it hurt and that’s okay.
So, with that new liberation my mind is able to see past tomorrow, even past next month. My heart is able to grasp at things it just couldn’t before.. something like my 30th birthday at the beginning of next year.
So I started to think…
Now, just so we are clear, this isn’t about me having an existential crisis about turning 30. If anyone understands the privileged of growing old its me, but it IS about where I want to see myself as I enter the next decade of my life and what I want to leave behind. Both equally as important. It’s about giving myself the ability to take some things off the back burner, to throw some excuses in the garbage and enter my 30’s with a little less bullshit and a little more awesome.
So what does that look like? What do I need to achieve that balance in 8ish months?
Well,  I decided to take a page from the wisest, most incredible person I have ever had the opportunity to learn from.. Lilee-Jean Frances;

I present to you the Before I’m 30, Why The Hell Not, Do Epic Shit, Be a Badass Bitch and Dance In The MF Rain List
In true Lilee-Bean fashion, these aren’t things that are out of the ordinary or things that seem wildly unattainable. They are the things that I want to achieve, they are the things in life I want to experience, and they are part of the person I want to become.
So in no particular order:

1. Find my Fit. This includes losing weight, but also falling in love with how powerful and wonderful my body is all over again. I’m well on my way but I have also set a scale # because, (while it doesn’t work for some) I need to see those numbers go down… for now anyway.
2. Get my motorcycle license(this can be swapped out for Skydiving, as lessons are considerably more expensive- so it would be pending finances)
3. And speaking of finances, before I turn 30 I want to pay off a portion of the debt that I have acquired.
4.  Publish the Little Book (stay tuned… its a secret… for now 😉 )
5. Finish the first draft of the Big Book (that’s what I like to call Lil’s and My Story)

5 Things. Some fun, some not so much. Most demand sacrifice, hard work, late nights, cheap wine, blood, sweat and tears. But each one, in my simple little world, represent something I either want to bring with me into my next decade or something I want to accomplish before I get there.

Letting go helped me get to a point where I was able see through my own eyes again, instead of through doubt. Letting go gave me openness so that I can fill my heart with things that keep it beating. The more weight we let the world, outside stresses and doubt put on our hearts, the heavier we will walk. The more we let fear dictate the next step we take, the longer we will walk straight through our lives on the path that has been laid out before us because *we think* its the right one.

 

Let go of what is holding you back so that your hands are FREE to reach out and grab all the things that make your heart soar.

Who do you want to become?

Take a deep breath.

and cut the rope.

Chelsey xo