Letting Go

It seems so simple. I mean, little girls can belt it regularly and you can tell they mean it. They are ready to LET IT GO! They sing with wild abandon, sometimes wearing a green dress, sometimes sitting on their sister, sometimes into a hairbrush. Let It Go.

The Serenity Prayer asks for the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. "Change", in my life, means "control" and I really can't tell the difference.

See the thing is, I'm right. I'm  100 % of the time categorically and inarguably right.

Always.

It's a burden.

It's a gift.

It sucks.

It causes major anxiety, as I worry and pace because I know someone is making a stupid choice and they aren't listening to me and if they would only just listen and let me run their life it'd be so much better. Learn from my mistakes, I'm begging you! Please stop making your own.

This was only irksome in my twenties. At 52, and as a parent, it is positively debilitating. And my children, being my children with mini invisible mohawks but every ounce of that attitude, refuse to listen to me ever ever ever because they think I just have anxiety and that I am wrong, even though they have evidence to the contrary. Every time something went wrong, I knew it was going to go wrong and I gave them a heads up to avoid what I see and they chose, instead, to tell me to let it go!

Aaannnnnnd....I was right. Every. Freaking. Time.

And this time, this time I really have to walk away. Let it go.

It hath made me mad. Mad, I tell you. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, and I now understand why people say they "throw themselves into work to avoid their personal life." Well, I threw myself into my personal life to avoid the trauma of my work, only to discover that I have no idea who I am or what I want, and my children are stubborn, and I overlooked my personal life for years to throw myself into my work, which no longer exists so...

My definition of "support"  has apparently been tied to control. I had a principal (four principals ago....three principals ago...?) flat out laugh and tell me I was a control freak. She was addressing my approaches to teaching, and I was pointing out how student led my department is. And while she acquiesced to the later, she still claimed that I was a control freak, and I needed to let things go. I mistakenly thought she was talking about my teaching methods, but clearly she was calling me on something much bigger that I did not see at the time.

And so, as the universe is wont to do when you refuse to let go, it will do it for you. And it won't be pretty, it won't be subtle, it will be wrenching. I  first experienced this when I started teaching. I was holding on to a dead end but well paid job waiting tables, being a stay at home mom and generally doing nothing about a career. It was a routine and the money was good. Then, suddenly, and without warning...I was fired.

Well, shit.

Jim and I turned to one another and started quoting Dory in Finding Nemo.
   "Let go!"
   "How do you know it's going to be all right?"
   "I don't!"

So we did, and I embarked on a teaching career, that I thought would be my final career. Letting go was scary as hell, we worried about money, about how I could possibly work full time with the girls in first and third grade, but once we let go it just happened. The job at Littleton literally fell into my lap, and there you have it.

For the first few years the struggle was awful, but I loved teaching and building the department,and magically babysitters and rides just appeared to help manage the girls' schedules. I cried a lot, I screamed a lot, but I wanted to run the department, so I persevered.

I cite the first two years as hell and the next five as almost heaven.

I had complete control of the classes, IB Theatre, the shows, training actors and techies, training designers, hiring alumni to help with tech, everything. Then the administration changed, and the renovation ripped Maris apart from stem to stern and everything that was under my control...was no longer. Just like that.

Well, shit.

Fourteen years after letting go of what was and embracing the moment, I have been stripped of directing at the school, my stage is dead and my department as a whole is on the ropes. I've tried for a year and a half to hold it together with little success, manically waving my arms in an attempt to regain control. In the meantime, my beautiful and talented 21 and 20 year old children are embarking on their own lives, making their own difficult and beautiful and difficult life choices. And I look at them and become anxious and controlling and they need support, not control and it turns out...I have no idea what "support" means. I am looking to them, because I have lost control of my theatre and anything that was a career. It was taken from me, because I needed to let go (apparently, I'm still unclear in this area), and did not. So it was taken. And without directing and designing and building and producing and shopping and all of those things that go with running the department, I'm assigning four page essays to LA9 Honors freshmen that I then have to grade, and back to freaking out because my children will not let me run their lives.

But dammit, I know what's best.

This is why I am not, nor will I ever be, an adult.

I think adults have the serenity to accept the things they cannot control, to control the things they can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In short, an adult knows how to Let It Go.

These are my thoughts,
respectfully submitted
K.Martin
Physically 52 years old but clearly not an adult.