Day Nine
I woke up today feeling pretty good. I'm getting some good out of this web site, and it is cathartic to write about my past life and my disappointments in this journal. I've talked about many of these issues with therapists and my wife, but it seems to help to put it in writing.
I'm not getting any younger and I know that I can't un-do or un-make any of the things that I've mistakenly done or have had happen to me over the course of my life, but I do want to be able to live with them. That seems to me like an achievable goal to me, so I work at it every day. One of the things I most need to work on is regret. I have many, many regrets and sometimes they seem very heavy. In order to really feel better, I need to put those regrets aside. That would seem like real peace to me to not be walking down the street or shopping or riding somewhere on a trip and not have a mass of regrets suddenly jump to the forefront of my mind and spoil the rest of my day.
I suppose what I'm ultimately talking about is self-forgiveness. I have a tendency to blame myself for everything that's happened to me, whether I actually caused it or not. I carry around a kind of foolish notion that if I'd been smart enough or brave enough or quick enough, I'd have somehow been able to prevent these many, many regrettable things from happening to me. This is a kind of a ridiculous conceit that I live with, that I should somehow have been perfect and immune from either making mistakes or being on the wrong end of somebody else's mistake. I'll be the first to say that it's a heavy burden that's really taken a toll on me. It's tended to make me very hesitant about life, sometimes timid, other times outright cowardly. I know that it has a great deal to do with the trust issues I have, and that it's prevented me from forging relationships with other people. Except for my wife, I"m mostly alone, and although I'm comfortable being alone with myself, I sometimes wish I had some close friends that I could talk with about some of the things I've written about in this journal. Good friends are a great gift, but it's a gift I've deprived myself of through my inability to trust other people. I hope that as I continue with this journal and the website it's on, I'll sooner or later be able to learn to trust others and forgive myself.
I'm not getting any younger and I know that I can't un-do or un-make any of the things that I've mistakenly done or have had happen to me over the course of my life, but I do want to be able to live with them. That seems to me like an achievable goal to me, so I work at it every day. One of the things I most need to work on is regret. I have many, many regrets and sometimes they seem very heavy. In order to really feel better, I need to put those regrets aside. That would seem like real peace to me to not be walking down the street or shopping or riding somewhere on a trip and not have a mass of regrets suddenly jump to the forefront of my mind and spoil the rest of my day.
I suppose what I'm ultimately talking about is self-forgiveness. I have a tendency to blame myself for everything that's happened to me, whether I actually caused it or not. I carry around a kind of foolish notion that if I'd been smart enough or brave enough or quick enough, I'd have somehow been able to prevent these many, many regrettable things from happening to me. This is a kind of a ridiculous conceit that I live with, that I should somehow have been perfect and immune from either making mistakes or being on the wrong end of somebody else's mistake. I'll be the first to say that it's a heavy burden that's really taken a toll on me. It's tended to make me very hesitant about life, sometimes timid, other times outright cowardly. I know that it has a great deal to do with the trust issues I have, and that it's prevented me from forging relationships with other people. Except for my wife, I"m mostly alone, and although I'm comfortable being alone with myself, I sometimes wish I had some close friends that I could talk with about some of the things I've written about in this journal. Good friends are a great gift, but it's a gift I've deprived myself of through my inability to trust other people. I hope that as I continue with this journal and the website it's on, I'll sooner or later be able to learn to trust others and forgive myself.
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