I'm Here for Me - Day 163

That was my "intention" for my yoga class today. Not really that I set that intention, but it was something I expressed to a friend right before the class as I was answering her when she asked for the fourth time how I was doing (she knew I wasn't just "fine"). The point of my saying that was that I was no longer going to accept and allow myself to be taken over by energies and thoughts and internal conversations about someone else or about some irrelevant situation. Like, that's not here, that's not mine. What's mine, I will face and walk. But the rest isn't mine and I don't have to carry it. I am here for me. I am doing what I see as best to do for me. So, not "dedicating my practice to myself" per se as yoga teachers might suggest sometimes. But dedicating myself to myself, my existence to myself, my choices to myself, in self-honesty and self-responsibility, and especially self-support.

My yoga practice has been "suffering" lately, as have many other areas of my life. I realized today that this is because I have not been showing up for myself in yoga or in other instances. Instead I have been bringing all my junk, all my baggage, all my energy, with me everywhere I go, hauling around all kinds of irrelevant reactions and hang-ups and road-blocks even while I am trying to do something completely unrelated, or even while I am trying to do something for myself, such as practice yoga.

So this was one of the coolest practices I have had in a while. Every time that I saw my mind beginning to get wrapped up in or around some irrelevant thought or experience, I brought myself back to my breath and back to the realization: I am here for me.

It sounds selfish. But one thing that I am learning, or is becoming clearer to me, in my looks at codependence, is how often I put others before myself. I do this most often, probably, in terms of my "mental attention" and energy. So that, even if there is no other with me, they are still with me in my mind, in my thoughts, in my reactions, in my internal conversations, etc. So that an experience that I have to myself by myself is taken over by this other person's presence in my mind. Now, obviously this other person is not actually inserting themselves into my mind. I am doing all of that. I am taking all of the many moments that I have to myself where I could and should be focused on whatever is in front of me, and instead I am devoting myself and my energy and my time toward certain thoughts, energies, reactions, and considerations that are not pertinent to me and are not pertinent to here, where I am.

I am here for me. I am here, for me and all as life. I am here for me, for me and all as life. I am here to support me. The things that I do, I do to support myself, so as to support myself in self responsibility and self honesty as what is best for all. When I am keeping another in my mind, there is no possible way I can do this. When I am keeping another in my mind, there is no possible way that I can support myself or be responsible for myself or ever have stability as myself. Because in this I am not myself, I am all kinds of personalities that are triggered when I think about that person. I am not here, with me, in the physical. I am abandoning myself to my mind and my systems of reaction.

One thing that I noticed too during my practice was how, in this presence with, for, and as myself, when I, for example, took rest: there I was. Often when I will take rest lately I will judge myself in some way, ridiculing myself and also projecting judgments out onto as sourced by others. So I saw in that moment of taking rest and being completely okay with taking rest because I was the rest and was not separate from myself within the rest, how I am almost never really within and as myself, really actually supporting myself and directing myself within the physical as whatever I need and whatever makes sense as a response to real actual experience.

Because: I am often or always judging myself. I am often or always judging others. I am often or always in my mind, considering others more than I consider myself, trying to make others feel a certain way, or otherwise existing atop layers upon layers of personalities, patterns, and characteristics that separate me from my actual self.

I also saw myself becoming wrapped up in thoughts about another person in the room, again not being here for me, not making my experience about me.

That was interesting in terms of the judgment point, too, because I saw how I might for example judge myself within a posture and then project that judgment outward, thinking about who can see me or might be looking at me at that time, and then believing that they are going to judge me and that I better adjust my posture in order to not be judged, or, better yet, to be judged very positively. And so I swing from judging myself to believing another is judging me to believing I can make another judge me highly to then being haughty within myself as I adjust my posture and believe that others will see it and think highly of me.

I mean I've looked at showing up for myself and I've looked at abandoning myself and I've been able to address these patterns thus far in the most obvious forms that they take. But now I am seeing again how these subtle experiences move and overwhelm me, taking me over because I have not directed them, until I am not really here for myself at all but am always in my mind with or about or focused on another. Or, if I am "with" myself, I am in fact against myself, judging myself even if only subtly, or blatantly.

So this practice was really cool because I was able to bring myself into myself and also see myself as I tried to slip away, and stop myself. It was a cool experience I would like to be able to expand to all of my living.


SO:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to the statement "I'm here for myself" as if this means I am selfish, within this judging myself and believing that I should not state this or should not try to live by this statement because it means that I am selfish and I should instead be here for other people or I need to add disclaimers about being here for myself as what is best for all or whatever and whatnot.

I realize that I am codependent and so for me to bring myself to myself in self honesty is for me to consider myself more in self-support rather than only or primarily considering others, and rather than making my existence about others. I realize there are other people who will need to adjust themselves differently in order to live in self honesty, dependent on their patterns and systems. I realize that the judgment that I have for myself in reacting to the statement "I'm here for myself" as selfish is a way to judge myself once again, and once again project those judgments outward with believing others might hear or read those words and believe I am being selfish, where here I realize that I have seen others as selfish when they have focused on taking care of themselves, because I have thought it is more important to take care of others.

I realize that when I showed up to yoga today with the "intention" "I am here for myself," I felt very free and capable and open and welcoming and welcomed and I felt less anxious and more free to talk to others and share myself and interested in getting to know other people too and generally more open and less closed off. I realize within this that by greeting other people with kindness and warmth, as I would like to be greeted, this changed my experience and my experience became one that was positive and welcoming, by being welcoming of others, also by showing gratitude for the community of other people because here I am beginning to see, realize, and understand how when I show up for myself, when I am here for myself, I am no longer expecting anyone else to show up for me or be here for me, nor am I making my experience contingent on anyone else: when I am here for myself I am my own responsibility and my experience is my own responsibility and within this I am free and open and capable and also ready and prepared to adjust and adapt to the reality around me.

I realize that I must be here for myself all the more because the job that I work is stressful and requires that I be ready and prepared to adjust and adapt to the reality around me which is to support others with their own ups and downs and their own strong reactions and to be a pillar of support and I cannot be a pillar of support if I am not first supporting myself by showing up for myself, knowing myself, understanding myself, and taking care of myself, also caring about myself.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to the point of "I'm here for myself" with judgment that it is selfish because I see, realize, and understand how being here for myself is what assists and supports me to live as what is best for all.

I commit myself to continue to assist and support myself with the "intention" or "mantra" that "I'm here for myself," continuing to define for myself what this means and what it feels like to free myself from my own chains of holding myself down and back with the irrelevant energies that I carry with me everywhere. I commit myself to continue to look at and investigate and define and  live out self-support and showing up here for myself, not abandoning myself, but instead living within and as myself, my whole self, because I see that this is the only way to take responsibility for myself, and this is the only way to live as what is best for all.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself at almost every turn, judging myself nearly constantly, judging myself to such a degree that I have gotten so used to it that I have not even really realized how much I have judged myself, and how much those judgments spill out of me and onto or against or as sourced by others, so that what is mine becomes someone else's because I have not been responsible for myself in my own self judgments because judging myself has become such an automated process by which I keep myself enslaved within my mind.

I commit myself to watching and trying to identify even the most subtle judgments I have against myself other others, positive or negative or neutral, because I realize that judgment is a point of separation and within judgment I am no longer one with and equal to that which I am judging but am instead separating myself, creating myself as one with and equal to the judgment, and within separation through judgment I am of course not able to be here for myself because instead I am here against myself or against another and within separation through judgment I am not able to see what is best for all or I am not able to see what makes the most sense within the physical because within separation through judgment I am within and as my mind in separation from what is here and so I am not able to accurately assess what is here nor move and direct myself within what is here in common sense as what is best for all because instead I am stuck in the point of judgment.


I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be here for me and support myself unconditionally, because I realize that it is within this that I do not give to myself that I experience all of the energies that I experience including anger, depression, anxiety, self-judgment, self-doubt, elation, sadness, apathy, and so on and so forth. I realize that if I do not start now to be here for me and support myself unconditionally, I will continue to torment myself within those energies, and within the most extreme instances of those energies I really lose control of myself, and within a loss of control of myself I do not trust myself to behave in a way that is best for me or best for all. I realize that I face a very dark darkness sometimes within myself and it is only through being here for me and supporting myself unconditionally, embodying myself and unifying within and as myself as life, that I will be able to face those darknesses without giving myself over to them. I commit myself to continue this process of being here for me and supporting myself unconditionally and knowing and understanding myself as what is best for all.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to accept and allow myself to participate within and as thoughts and energies, subtle as well as obvious, that do not support me and do not support my stability. I recommit myself to stopping these patterns and reactions and energy creations when and as I see them. I stop, and I breathe, and I realize again that I am here for me, I am here to assist and support myself to be stable. I am here to assist and support myself as life as what is best for all, and it does not assist or support me to engage within and as those energies.

Falling and Breathing - Day 158

I haven't been writing as much or as honestly about what is really going on for me the last few days because I haven't wanted to accept responsibility for myself. I've known that there isn't much I can say here that is self-honest without that. I have identified and lived as if the "stress" and "anxiety" is "out of control," as if I am out of my own control. I have fed into multiple automated systems which compound upon one another leaving me with migraines and other physical pain that just make it that much easier to excuse myself from having to actually stand up and take responsibility for myself.

Each day has felt like a big question mark of how it will go, like as if I am completely at the mercy of whatever thoughts and energies pass through me. Each time I receive a text message it's a big question mark of if it will be yet another stimulus for stress, anxiety, or anger. Each interaction I have with another person is a big question mark of who I am and who they are and what it all means, defaulting on panic and self-judgment.

Each day is a new opportunity to live as a victim and abdicate self responsibility and project judgment and blame and become more and more out of control.

I can't go on like this, and I've thought of quitting. I've thought of it as pointless, but it is the point.

One thing occurred to me while laying in bed moments ago. I've been asked by a friend if I am able to be stable or if my energy moves me. It moves me. How can I be stable? And then I reflected on some individuals who have written about their process of waking up and their realizations about the fear and other energies they immediately feed into upon waking. So I saw for example how each day is new. I can wake up each day and start it with self support and self trust to support myself in that day. It is a question mark inasmuch as I do not know what will happen. But I know I can breathe.

And each breath is new. In each breath I have myself; each day I have myself. I mean what the fuck am I supposed to rely on when I am in this kind of a storm? I begin to self-deprecate, and also get all mopey that I have no friends or that my family isn't like some other families, and reflect back on all the many pains I have encountered as if these things somehow squash me and truly make me who I am. Or reflect back on every minor interaction of the day which automatically becomes an infraction in my mind as I conjure up more and more reasons to barrage myself with hatred, judgment, and blame.

This is not stability. This is a deliberate swan dive as an automated response to fear of living.

On the one hand I could say I cannot trust myself, and I cannot rely on myself. But if not myself, then whom? The truth is I can breathe. The truth is I am here. The truth is that I have to wake up each day and support myself, and when I fall, I get back up, and support myself again. I breathe. I forgive myself.

I haven't forgiven myself much lately because I haven't wanted to give myself that kind of grace and compassion. If I can hold onto the energy then I can continue to be a victim. If I can continue to be a victim then I can continue to blame everyone else but me. "I'm different. My mind is too much. I can't help it."

And sometimes it is really hard to trust myself. Sometimes it is really overwhelming to see how all of my memories and past experiences inform who I am today, how I try to play out and relive past pains and make them somehow different now, and creating new pains and traumas to keep me trapped. It isn't working though. There is mind survival, and then there is survival. Survival to live is kicking in.

What am I supposed to do when I cannot trust myself?

I can breathe.
I can have patience with myself.
I can trust in my breath, at least, and be here.

There is so much I believe I cannot let go of, or I do not want to let go of. But it's killing me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and allow the accumulation of energies that has brought me to this point.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to support myself unconditionally and absolutely.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to bring myself to the point of my energy creation manifesting as pains in my body, migraines in my head.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel out of control and really believe that I am out of control, that there is nothing I can do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to turn away from myself in writing so that I have not utilized this tool to see myself through this time. I've been taking space. It's okay. But it is better to at least still write.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel as if every single little thing that happens or item on my schedule or agenda or interaction or every single little thing, is another drop in a bucket that is already overflowing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge and doubt myself at every single turn, and yet still hold tightly onto myself as my righteousness as if righteousness is my life force, as if it is all that I have, because in my past it was so easily taken away and squandered and shuffled about and pushed under the rug, as if I did not matter. That is the past. This is now.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go into full automated activation of past memories and experiences when encountering new experiences which are similar or reminiscent.

I realize these things happen to me repeatedly not because others are evil and not because I am not worthy of a certain quality of life, but because of my patterns and my participation.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand this automated activation as what is happening, and figure out what to do about it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to replay and relive out interactions with my dad, trying to make a different result this time.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really understand how all of those similarities I have already seen have actually influenced and informed and directed me as activators of personality and survival systems, wherein I have believed that there is much more at stake than is really at stake, indeed I have mistaken what is at stake, which is not me in my self righteousness but is me in self honesty and self support and self responsibility and self stability.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize what I am doing to myself and others by my participation in this sick automated game.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify this as sick. It is what it is. I see it now, or am finally beginning to see it now.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear waking up and feed into anxiety about the morning and the day and what the day will bring and what stressors I will have to face and how I will possibly be able to handle them and within this questioning if I am even capable, questioning if I should even have a job, or this job, questioning why I am alive if I am apparently so inept at living.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and allow every small initial fear or anxiety or doubt to snowball into complete and absolute self-abuse and self-sabotage instead of accepting and allowing myself to stop, breathe, and create complete and absolute self support and unconditional love and understanding.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want others to understand me when I have not even fully understood myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to consider abandoning process as a way of like throwing my hands up in the air and giving up and believing that this isn't "working" and that it would be better to just go back to self-medicating through energy and substance. But I realize how much I have learned and how I would be taking that to support myself even if I abandoned process, because I know no other or better way... So why not keep learning?


I commit myself to wake up and breathe. I commit myself to breathe through each moment. I commit myself to rely on and trust in my breath. I commit myself to practice being fully present and aware in every moment in and as every breath. I commit myself to write out myself for myself or for my blog when I see that I am experiencing any kind of energy that is limiting my living. I commit myself to myself as life for as long as I am living and breathing.

Pressure to Participate - Day 141

Recently I have been letting go of the pressure to blog every day. I have had days where in self-honest consideration I have not felt the need / want to blog, and so I have not. However I still face days where in self-honesty I see that I am merely facing resistance to blogging. Today was one of those days.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that my ("successful") existence is contingent on my active participation with desteni.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that my active participation with desteni mandates that I must blog every single day.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to equate my process with my definition of "active participation with desteni," where here I see that desteni is a tool to support me as my process, process is always here within and as me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abandon myself when I am experiencing a negative or apathetic mood state.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that who I am is "over there," at my computer, writing or reading or watching, so that if I am not doing that or am resisting that, then I abandon myself in self-judgment.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, understand, and live the realization that I am here in my body with myself always, in my breath, always.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, understand, and live the realization that my process is myself, who I am in all moments, and how I support myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to exist in mood-states where I resist writing and to basically like give up on myself for that day, where if I do not want to write then I abandon myself as this process altogether for that day, or think even about abandoning the process itself altogether as a reaction to resistance, an extension of the now-moment-energy into all of time as who I am, thus allowing myself to be consumed by the energy and allowing the energy to move me.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be with myself always as my process and as my breath in my body, where I am always already. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to imagine myself as "stable" as "self-supportive" only existing if / when / as I am writing and "feel" "on-track" with "knowing" what to write about / having that motivation to write.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself as less-than when I resist writing, within this placing myself over there, where I am resisting, abandoning myself here, where I actually am, separating myself from myself through resistance and judgment.

When and as I see myself experiencing a resistance to writing and/or walking this process, I stop and I breathe. I breathe myself into my body and into my breath, here, where I am, not in my mind, not in my images of the successful on-track me, not at my computer, but here in my body in my breath in the physical. Here. And as I am here I am walking, I am always in process, I am always in every moment at the point of supporting myself in whatever way is best. I commit myself to stop the judgment and to just breathe. I commit myself to realizing I am here in my body always. I commit myself to releasing myself from my own self-imposed pressures and expectations, releasing the judgment, and simply breathing. I commit myself to the realization that I am my process, always, no matter where I am, no matter what I am doing, and so therefore I commit myself to the realization that just because I do not write does not mean I am not walking, and so therefore I commit myself to stop the judgment and separation of myself from myself, instead embodying myself as process, as walking process in every breath, directing myself in self honesty and self support and self responsibility, releasing myself from the pressure to walk process a certain way, and realizing that I am always walking as long as I am breathing.

I commit myself still to continue on in my process of writing, but to, when and as I see myself resisting writing, stop, breathe, and look at myself here. Here I am, in my body, not over there, and I do not need to abandon myself here to judge myself from my imagination of me over there.

Filling the Void in Myself with My Breath - Day 131

I've been continuing to struggle a lot with anger and negative emotions, accompanied by self-pity and projection of blame. Most important to curtail here is the projection of blame. It's not like I've just been sitting with myself with my own emotions and supporting myself through those emotions. No, I've been experiencing the emotions and then immediately finding absolutely any excuse or reason I can to blame someone or something else for my emotions, including coming back to the grudge, or allowing thoughts of hopelessness about my job, which, up til this week, I was really enjoying.

But I can't allow it. I won't.

Today... I didn't focus on my breath. Not a lot, anyway. But this morning on my way to work, I did take a deep breath. And in that breath I remembered my breath. I mean I remembered my breath as me, and as a tool to support me. I was able to assist myself out of a lot of the negative energy and anger and blame through and as my breath. It didn't last all day, this increased awareness of myself as my breath. But today was a lot better than yesterday and the day before. And now I can reflect on a big part of why: My breath. And I can reflect on how I can support myself tomorrow: My breath. Always my breath.

In my last post I had mentioned how I had found some relief / respite, and a way to break down the wall in a way. And I had mentioned how soon after that relief, I felt emptiness, and then fear, and then the fear led to the creation of more anger and negative energy. I didn't know what to do with the empty space. I [thought I] needed something to hold onto.

So now I hold onto my breath, myself as my breath.

And I mean, I really am my breath, right? So to fill the void, fill the emptiness, fill myself up with my breath, is filling myself up with myself. Is embodying myself. Is being here with and as myself, in the physical. I mean we "know" this, but I rarely live it. That is what I am here to teach myself to do (like actually DO, not just "know" -- this is applied learning!), and what I learn from everyone else involved in this group all the time.

So, my breath. My breath, myself as my breath, filling myself up with my breath, thus filling myself up with myself... That is how I show up for myself. That is how I do not abandon myself in, to, and as negative energy, thoughts, judgments, etc. Because that is precisely what I have been doing -- abandoning myself and all as LIFE, by existing within and as my mind consciousness systems of anger and negative energetic experiences.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abandon myself and all as life, as one and equal as life, as what is here in the physical, by engaging in and entertaining mind energy, especially in this case anger, resentment, projection of blame, and other negative energetic experiences.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create negative energetic experiences for myself, experiences which I do not enjoy, and yet I do not relent, and I have not assisted or supported myself to release myself of the grasp of these energetic experiences.

I forgive myself therefore for not accepting or allowing myself to truly assist and support myself out of the negative energies, instead holding on tightly to them, as they hold on tightly to me, not realizing that within this I am abandoning myself and giving myself over to the false constructions of my mind as energy.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to fully utilize my breath as the one and only truly necessary step to being here in the physical within and as myself as life, supporting myself to align myself within principles of equality and oneness and what is best for all through existing here as my breath in the physical.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not embody myself as my breath in the physical so that without holding onto mind energy experiences, I feel empty, because I have not realized myself as here in my human physical body, always here, breathing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe I am empty and I have nothing if I do not have my anger and resentment. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create and nurture an affinity toward energetic experiences, especially negative ones, so as to "fill myself up" and give myself "meaning" and "definition."

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to define myself as my breath, as life.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see, realize, and understand, until now, that whatever emptiness I believe I feel within myself, only I can fill, and it can only truly be filled by me, as my breath, in the here and now, in the physical, as life.

When and as I see myself feeling empty, as nothing, or hollow, I stop, and I breathe. I take a deep slow breath, in and out, and again. I fill myself with my breath. I realize that emptiness and nothingness is who I am as life, as a physical being, and so in this moment I continue to breathe, and I breathe until I am stable in nothingness. I continue this process until I am stable in nothingness, until I have released myself of all the energy I have created and hoarded and held onto.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to always search for blame in someone or something else for why I feel the way I do, ie who I am accepting and allowing myself to be. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create an even greater buffer between myself and my Self by first engaging in emotional energy, and then by creating the separation of projected blame. I commit myself to stop the blame.

When and as I see myself projecting blame or coming up with reasons or excuses or blaming another for who I am and how I feel, I stop and I breathe. I breathe deeply and slowly. I realize that I am creating my experience of myself and I am creating myself in every moment. I commit myself to creating myself as my breath in self honesty, self responsibility, and self support, as one, as equal, as life, as what is best for all.

Betrayal - Day 104

He reacted within his mind to what I said and interpreted it as a threat.
I reacted within my mind to what he said, which was not intended to be read by me, and interpreted it as like a betrayal.

Betrayal.

Sitting on their roof

Memory: During my sophomore year of college (2007-08), my group of friends who I considered as like my family requested to speak with me to inform me that they had made a decision about their living arrangement which meant that my ex, my first boyfriend, first kiss, first everything, was going to be moving in with them in just a few weeks. They lived across the hall from me in the same apartment complex, and I spent at least as many waking hours in their apartment as I did in mine. I was not handling the break up well. I had been extremely depressed, and even contemplated suicide. A family doctor had prescribed anti depressants for me and I was doing much better, but still avoiding my ex, first as an attempt to allow myself the space to detach, then avoidance within anxiety and fear and holding a grudge.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that it was okay and acceptable to force my friends to put up with me during an intense period of depression wherein I moped and laid on their couch and was generally a very negative presence, not taking responsibility for myself, not taking advice, but only wanting sympathy and comfort and fuel for my depression. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not realize/see that just because I felt better inside with the anti depressants did not mean that I had not impacted my friends and friendships in a negative way through my depression, that popping a pill is not the same as taking responsibility for myself. 

I forgive myself that I did not accept or allow myself to see, realize, and understand that because I refused to see my ex, this meant that my friends also saw my ex much less, and they probably missed him, not because they liked him more than they liked me, but simply because they liked him. Just as I did. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to charge this drama up even more within the thought that he was "my first everything," using this as an excuse to make the break up more painful and give me more fuel to feel sorry, sad, bad and depressed. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to become stuck within depression such that I did not want to get out, I did not want to hear anyone tell me how to get out, or how they had gotten out of a similar situation. All I wanted was for people to give me sympathy and pity and make me feel like it was okay to mope and be useless. 

My friends told me they had known for about 2 weeks that this would be happening, so to me this meant that for 2 weeks my friends, my family basically, had been keeping this secret from me. All of them knowing, me alone not knowing.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that because my friends knew how depressed I had been and how so many months (2-3?) ago I had wanted to kill myself, they should be understanding and allow me to continue to mope and basically walk on egg shells around me, where it was this belief that I probably projected outward so that they understood that I was fragile which actually is probably part of why they kept the news from me for as long as they could, because they feared my reaction, not realizing the consequences of acting in fear.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hold on to this knowledge of my friends having kept this secret from me, using this as evidence that they had intentionally betrayed me, that they knew what they were doing would hurt me and so they avoided telling me. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe thus that my friends were plotting against me, actually planning out how to hurt me, since clearly they spent time reaching the point of finally telling me.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to compound this belief within the realization that they did not finally inform me of this new change until I was about to leave to go home to go to bed as it was late and I had just gotten off work, so it was like they waited until the last possible minute to finally come clean and tell me, so within this I saw them as irresponsible and evasive of facing consequences, so I was able to blame them for my reaction because they could have communicated better.

So here I see it is not necessarily always the actual news itself that is most troublesome but is my identification with poor communication as being problematic where I find the most room to blame another, as is also the case with my apartment manager where it was his poor communication of the events as they unfolded that I latched onto most as justifying my anger, where here I expect other people to communicate openly and honestly, to keep me informed -- and I can see a connection here to how my mom has in the past and present kept secrets from me and others in order basically to protect us from having to face the news she must share, to prolong the prevention of reactions as long as possible, where I have always resented her when she does this because I then receive news of some family illness after the fact or end up with not much time to process the news she is giving, as has been the case both here with my friends and now with my apartment manager, where the upsetting news is compounded as more upsetting because of the time pressure along with the belief that the information was intentionally kept from me, regardless of why, although I usually assume/believe the intent is to harm me, even though typically another's intent is not likely to have anything at all to do with me but probably has more to do with the person keeping the information wanting to avoid consequences / protect themselves.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that other people keep information from me because they want to harm me, because they want me to be tricked and deceived. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to understand what other reasons might motivate a person to keep information from me, and to regardless of the whys support myself unconditionally and absolutely, rather than latching on to the matter of time and placing blame outside myself for my intense reaction because I wish that another person had communicated better and I believe that they purposely communicated poorly so as to harm me. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to believe that other people are manipulative and deceptive and intentionally trying to harm me, because within this I become the victim, within this I lose sight and understanding that I am my own directive principle, that no other person can make me react a certain way or have a certain experience, but that I accept and allow myself to react, and I accept and allow myself to react even more when surprises / poor communication are involved, rather than simply taking the information as it comes and assisting and supporting myself to understand the situation with whatever information I have. 

Back to my memory:
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not know who I could trust because here every single one of them was in on it, even one of their girlfriends who did not even live there and who apparently now was "more important" than me because she was in on this plan, so they were all in on it together, conspiring against me together. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to doubt the real-ness of our entire friendships, to believe thus that I had been burden and they had identified me as a burden without ever telling me, thus not being real or honest with me, thus I doubted the entirety of the friendships believing they were fake all along, thus I believed that I could not trust other people and that I could not trust friends, that any person who seemed to be my friend was only doing so for some manipulative dishonest reason, because here the people who I thought were my closest friends, like family, had managed to betray me in such a way as this, so I believed this was thus possible in any friendship, so I developed an even greater fear of friendships now not only as a fear of their eventual demise as through my memories of friendships as my own inability within friendship longevity, but now also as a fear of betrayal and treachery and deceit, a paranoia that nobody actually likes me, that people simply just put up with me for as long as they can before finally spitting me out. 

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to traumatize myself within this conflict such that I have had like a PTSD in regards to friendships and believing that these moments will replay themselves within my life in my friendships, believing there is nothing I can do to stop it, having flash backs of the arguments and experiences, and generalizing the specific experience of this memory onto all my experiences, interactions, and friendships. 

They also told me that they were doing this because my ex was "in a bind." And to me this was bullshit. I "knew" my ex. I knew his family. I knew he could not possibly be in a bind because of their financial stability and their home's proximity to campus. He could move home if he was really in a bind.

This blow made talking to my ex relatively easy. Suddenly I was not so scared to talk to him. I suppose it washed away, sort of, all that I had created in the time after our break up as my reactions and beliefs about him and myself, and brought me back to what had originally been a very stable and supportive relationship (which developed into instability and a lack of support primarily because of my increased depression and paranoia over time -- probably also precisely how I alienated these friends into choosing my ex over me). So I trusted that I could rely on him to show up for this conversation based on what I knew of him, his sweetness, his seemingly genuine starting point of supporting me from a place of "love," his ability to let go of his Seattle-born hipster pretense to have an honest conversation with me.

It (our relationship) didn't end well, although it was not messy, and we were too young and naive, but it was the only "healthy" relationship I've ever had. Or the closest thing to it, anyway.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I know better and to go into like detective mode to try and find evidence that I am right, that he is not really in a bind, that they are lying to and manipulating me. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to search out evidence that could stand as like proof of this betrayal and deceit, where here I don't know what I expected to have happen -- evidence is not a time machine, it does not change anything. Evidence only gave me more reason to continue to react and continue to be angry and hurt. It justified my own creation of reaction. 

So I forgive myself for always accepting and allowing myself to try to delineate and put in order the series of events that lead up to and occur within a conflict like as if I am trying to prove something, like as if I am trying to put someone away before a judge or jury, like as if the evidence will actually do anything at all other than make me more miserable and increase the disparity within my mind between what I perceive and what is actually happening, where even if these friends were irresponsible, even if they did betray me, and even if I can find proof of their lies and manipulation, it does not change the fact that it happened, and it did not make them apologize or take ownership of their actions. It did possibly help me to feel "validated" within myself so that it was easier for me to realize that these friends were not really being "friendly" and so easier to move on, but in most cases I use evidence as fuel for my fire of anger and reaction, holding on to verbal exchanges, holding onto actions, holding onto series of events all to create a drama within my mind, a paranoia, trying to get it all in order believing this to be my salvation, not realizing that this is all in my mind, it is not supportive, it is not self honest, it does not fucking matter. It happened. What's next? 

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to, in reaction to the discrepancies between my perception of reality and the responses of others within conflict in my family, where what I saw to be real was not treated as real by others, where conflict was continually swept under the rug, to believe that I had to seek out evidence and formulate solid arguments in order to like keep myself sane, because arguing with my dad for example was like "crazy making" as we would go in circles and circles soon to be far and away from the real issue at hand, he always refusing to apologize, he always denying responsibility for his actions, me always left to feel as if I am the problem for seeing a problem. I forgive myself thus for accepting and allowing myself to try to validate myself through the collection of evidence and the memorization / recording of the series of events so that I can at the very least know what to tell myself, to be able to say "this is what happened and it was not okay," believing this would somehow make it better, believing too that I might someday be able to convince someone else to convince me that it was not okay, believing that this was how I could know it was not okay, since everyone around me seemed to treat it like it was fucking okay to hit your son. 

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to gather evidence and record events and then hold on to all of this as proof and validation to fuel my reactions and fuel also my depression as a result of my confusion from the discrepancies between what should have happened and what actually happened, what I saw versus what I was told. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to carry this reaction to conflict with me where I am not only experiencing conflict, which is difficult within and as itself, but am also believing in fear that no one else will believe my experience, my interpretation, no one else will understand what I am seeing, people will deny it, people will ignore it, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto this evidence like a toxic poison within myself, holding onto the past, not getting past the past, getting stuck on the past, getting stuck in conflict, getting stuck in my mind. 

This is an ongoing pattern for me which especially contributes to the formation of grudges. It will come up again. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue and reinforce my pattern of grudge development through my reaction to this break up where at first I still wanted to be friends, but then saw I was still being too dependent on him, and so I wanted space, and then from there I did not want to see him or talk about him or hear anything about him -- I wanted him to not exist -- because I continued to relate to him within my mind, I continued to hold on to all the evidence I had compiled as to why he was a 'bad person' or how the way he broke up with me was cruel or continue otherwise to point fingers at him for my internal condition / state. 

I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to react with like a grudge and avoidance even within the parts that I did take responsibility for, like seeing how I had become depressed and realizing that this would not be fun for him, understanding that we were young and that we probably wouldn't be together forever, being grateful for the ways he was good to me, but then because I regretted my actions and behavior and because I missed him, I held this against him and held it against myself, by which I mean that I continued to punish myself through my reactions, through my resistances to him and friendship with him. 

Anyway, I requested to talk with him. He told me he wasn't in a bind. He admitted that the only reason he accepted the offer to move in with them was that he assumed that they had already talked to me about it and that I was okay with it. Obviously he assumed wrong, and he admitted that he should have checked with me first. Suddenly on my end everything was okay again: I forgave him in no small part because here he took my side: he was willing to enable my reactions through giving me the space to hate him. Within an experience of betrayal, sides become what matter.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create false relationships with other people, such as with him, where it did not take much to wash away a lot of the resentment and anger I had created, and thus it was false, but it was not until there was like a bigger threat that I was able to let go of that resentment and anger, that I was able to come back to the reality of the relationship we'd had. 

I forgive myself therefore for not realizing and understanding that when I feel angry with another person it is only temporary, and therefore it is not real. If I feel angry with another person and then something comes up where I need that person, my anger dissipates, so it is not real. 

I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to relate to others based on my emotional whims, depending on my mood state, and depending also on what I need a perceive I can get from them, whether it is something tangible or more like an emotional support, or company, or whatever it is. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create the illusion of "sides" within this experience of betrayal, separating myself from others like us versus them, and also seeking out people to "take my side," trying to turn others against "them" so that I can feel valid within my anger and resentment and also feel like I am punishing them by taking away potential friendships. This is nowhere near the first time that I engaged in this behavior, and it was also not the last. 

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from my friends, whom I considered like family, to put us on opposite sides, opposing sides, so that I was isolating myself within my reaction and my lack of forgiveness, isolating myself within a belief that this is what it means to stand up for myself, isolating myself within a belief that this was some terrible travesty and they needed to learn a lesson from it, not allowing myself to really learn from it until years later. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be confused about what it really means to stand up for myself, where to me it has always meant not letting others walk all over me, being defensive, building walls, and making sure everyone knows that I am right, this time I am right. 

What does it really mean to stand up for myself? 

So, by my friends, I felt lied to, deceived, manipulated, abandoned, and, obviously, betrayed. I became rigid and inflexible within this betrayal. All parties refused to apologize or take any responsibility whatsoever -- in fact some demanded apologies from me (the audacity, I thought). Some simply did not care enough to have the conversations to find understanding. Too involved in their studies or video games, not invested enough in what were supposed to be simple social relationships.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel lied to, deceived, manipulated, abandoned, and betrayed. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react within and move myself by these emotions. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become rigid and inflexible within my emotional reactions, believing I am right and justified and valid within these reactions, holding tightly onto them so that no one could take them away from me or tell me they were false or wrong or not real or not valid -- so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react within my childhood like as if people were taking away or invalidating my experiences as what I saw transpire in my family, in my home, so that it was like whatever I saw or experienced to be real was not real, instead whatever another person told me or however another person behaved was what was real, and I was just expected to shut up, watch, and deal with it. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to become possessive of my reactions, holding tightly onto them because I feared that someone might tell me they were not real or valid or someone might tell me I was wrong, that what I saw was wrong, that my identification of a problem is what is problematic, that I should just shut up and deal with it. 

So again I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to like "evidence" to justify and validate my emotional reactions, like trying to prove to myself as much as anyone else that my experiences are valid, what I see is valid, I AM VALID, I MATTER. (But who am "I"? It is not my reactions that are valid and matter here.)

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I do not matter simply because I perceived that I did not matter to others, where here I did not allow myself to matter to myself, to take care of myself, to respect, assist, and support myself, but placed my existence as whether or not I matter outside myself, where whatever it was that I perceived within the world around me dictated what I believed about myself, so that when I saw abuse and it was not properly faced or addressed or handled or even admitted to, I believed that I was wrong for seeing it, and I believed that what I saw did not matter, and thus I believed that I did not matter. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to matter to myself. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to validate myself. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to believe myself as my real experiences and what I saw transpire as I grew up. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect others to apologize, to believe that an apology makes everything better. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to the memory that my father NEVER apologized, refused to take ownership for his actions, left every behavior of his open ended in terms of whether it was right or wrong, and yet was extremely controlling of us as his children and my mother as his wife, expecting us to do whatever he wanted us to do, expecting us to put up with his abuse, expecting us to not react, expecting us to just let him do whatever, to sink the ship and take us down with him. 

I forgive myself thus for accepting and allowing myself to place high value on the power of an apology, and when another does not apologize, to fuel this with memories of my father. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I had nothing to apologize for, for not even considering to look at myself to see how I might not have been a good friend, as was the accusation against me when an apology was demanded of me. I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is unsafe to apologize first, that if I do that then I risk being vulnerable, I risk the other person taking my apology as proof that they are right, and still they will not apologize, and then I will have admitted I was wrong and they will continue to believe they are right.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to treat apologies as like an exchange, where when I apologize I expect to get something, like another apology, in return, or so that if another does not apologize then I withhold my forgiveness, rather than simply apologizing as I see fit within self honesty, and forgiving as I see fit within self honesty, both within taking responsibility for myself. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see the real power of apologies and forgiveness to free myself. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use apologies and forgiveness to further enslave myself within my mind. 

I had it out with multiple people on multiple occasions. I was a mess in general. I wanted people to take my side. The one person besides my ex who did, in a way, take my side, did it without my asking. I was floored and I still remember it clearly. He had been in the apartment during the whole conversation (he was one of 5 who lived there), but he had to leave for work. He listened quietly, not interjecting much, until he was about to leave. As he left he also left us with some words, which were something along the lines of telling the other guys that he thought it was shitty the way they went about this whole thing, and telling me he was sorry for how it happened, and it wasn't what he wanted. Then he donned his bicycle helmet and left. He was a very cool guy, I always thought, so it meant even more to me to "have"* his support. And at this point it seems that the fact that he gave me that support without my having to argue or beg for it was what made me appreciate it all the more, never demanding any more from him, but simply letting him be. (What does that tell me about relationships and where I decide to invest myself and my trust? Couldn't I learn from this experience where someone supported me of his own volition, without any requirements of me begging or victimizing myself or throwing myself at their feet to please show mercy upon me? Why do I always do this to myself? Why do I not support myself, and see when others are truly supporting me, not of their own self interest and not of manipulation, but of compassion?)

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually seek out friendships and relationships with people who do not support me -- but here I have to redefine what support means. Nonetheless I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually seek out friendships and relationships with people who are disrespectful, who treat me unkindly, who make fun of me, with whom I engage in conflict and butt heads. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to make conflict "right" because if I can regain the approval of the person with whom I am conflict, if I can gain the approval of someone I have identified as not yet approving of me, then this is like I am proving something to myself, that I am worth something, I have value, look I was able to manipulate this person into liking me, or manipulate myself into believing they like me. 

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to stick around in dysfunctional or even abusive friendships/relationships, where it is clear that the other person does not care about me the way that I care about them, simply because I believe that if I can ever manage to get them to care about me that way, or show that they care about me, say even just one nice thing to me, then this will mean I matter. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to respect myself, support myself, and know for myself that I matter, such that I look to others to do this for me, such that I keep myself in bad relationships and friendships rather than seeing that I do have value, I do matter, and I am worth more than abusing myself through my associations with others. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see and value the individuals who have seen and valued me, but to instead almost ignore them, believe they do not matter, and set my focus on gaining or winning the approval of those who do not see me and who do not value me. Within this I isolate myself. Within this I reject people who care. Within this I abuse myself. 

* (I notice that I often think of support in terms of as something to be "had" or acquired or obtained or earned, and that once I "have" it I can rest easy and rely on that knowledge of that support to feel validated and reassured.)

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use support as like a commodity to be earned and kept, like something to fall back on when I do not trust or believe in myself, like I will think "at least I have that person's support" and this will make me feel better about myself, like someone trusts or believes in me, so that here I do not have to develop trust in myself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually place my self worth and well being and validation outside myself, so that it is only when I receive support from someone I respect that I believe I am okay. 

The "support" that I receive from others is most often just a perception, and it is not permanent as it is still within my mind at this point. 

I commit myself here to learning to support myself absolutely within my physical, also understanding that it is within my physical existence as life that I am in fact supported by all life, as one and equal. 

I had dreams, too, or maybe nightmares. In one I was yelling at sort of the ring-leader of the whole thing. I woke myself up when I said out loud, "get the fuck out of my house," and then punched the wall, literally, physically, because within my dream I was trying to tear off the shirt he was wearing that I had made and given to him.

Later I snuck into the apartment when most of my old friends were not there, snuck into his room and stole back the shirt as well as the painting he had of mine.

I thought it was really horrible that "these people" could betray me like this, refuse to apologize or come to any understanding, go on with their partying and drugs and baking of delicious cookies without me like as if nothing had changed at all, like as if my absence had no impact at all, and then still keep things I had given to them. Didn't they feel twinges of pain when they looked at those things? Why did they show no remorse? Or why could I not see it?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to attach myself to things I have made or given to others as like an extension of myself, so that if that other person is no longer in my life or if we have a falling out or conflict, I wish that I could have those things back, so that here I obviously did not give them freely but gave them within a contingency of our continued friendship, of them valuing me. I forgive myself thus that I have not accepted or allowed myself to give of myself freely, because if for no other reason then I know that if I do not give of myself freely, I cannot receive freely, I will not be able to receive freely, because just as I have made contingencies for giving, so have I made contingencies for receiving. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to project memories and experiences onto objects and memories so that when I look at something that reminds me of an old friend, I feel a twinge of pain. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe and assume that all people do this, so that within this I become confused as to how another could keep something I gave them if we are no longer friends, not understanding that perhaps they do not have all the reactions and anger and resentment I have created for myself, not realizing that maybe they look at those things and they are just things, just objects, or maybe those things remind them of the positive aspects of our friendships, or simply remind them of the moment I gave them that thing, or I don't know what, I am not them, I do not know. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to project my internal experiences outward within the assumption that others have the same wiring and programming as I do and will have the same reactions to the same stimuli. 

Life went on, and in reflection of the period, I'm not entirely sure how. One of the last memories I have of the whole ongoing conflict was one of the friends sitting in my room, trying to objectively and analytically understand me from his hard science background. He was also a good guy, just one of the ones who wasn't invested enough. He had friends outside this group. He had interests none of us could relate to really. We had a lot of great inside jokes and he was another person who genuinely wanted to understand others and expressed that he cared, and so I missed him a lot sometimes.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I could convince this one friend, that he would come back to me, that maybe he could convince the others, and we could all be friends again.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to remain and maintain rigidity within my position such that even as this friend was sitting in my room trying to understand me, and not being able to, I did not stop to ask if I even understood myself, or if what I was doing / thinking / saying even made sense, or if I was simply holding fast to my "side" and not accepting or allowing any kind of self honest self reflection, not allowing myself either to really try to understand my friend's "side," so that by the end of the conversation, when he still did not understand me, we still were not friends. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have a specific outcome in mind at the outset of that conversation, where the outcome that I wanted was for this friend to understand me, to apologize, to take my side. I forgive myself thus for not actually engaging in conversation but only in explaining, only in continuing to bolster my own reactions within my mind through trying to convince another with all of my evidence and my detailed delineation of events which prove how unfair and manipulative everything was, within this believing / hoping that this would change this other person and make him take my side. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be so rigid and inflexible that I cut myself off from a friend who tried to understand me, who took the time and effort to engage in a conversation with me, who was a good friend that I enjoyed, who I then missed a lot over the years as I remembered the "good" times and realized that the "bad" didn't really matter. 

But anyway, life went on. I know I felt lonely. I know I was bitter. I know I didn't maintain any kind of friendship with my ex, really, even after he moved in. I remember too coming off the elevator as he was getting on, with who was probably his new girlfriend close behind him. I snickered to myself because I knew the look on his face: he was annoyed.

So I guess somehow I got up every day and went to my classes and wrote my papers and took tests and got decent grades and life went on. I recall that in some ways the whole ordeal was so outrageous, so seemingly uncalled for and blatantly unfair, that in some ways it was easy for me to stop seeking validation from others as holding a grudge and trying to get others to take my "side," because to me it was so obvious, to myself, what had happened, that it had been unfair, that this isn't what friends are supposed to do, so obvious that I was able to thus validate myself within it. I had my own studies to focus on, too, and my art. And I'd already been around the block the previous year with regards to getting through (but not over) betrayal.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to maintain distance from my ex even though we had reconnected on some level and as such I lost that connection with another person who knew me well and did care about me, who helped me see parts of myself that I did not want to see, who had enough respect for me and for himself to end our relationship when he saw that it was no longer healthy or supportive. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to comfort myself within my "knowledge" that I was "right" and that "what they did was wrong" so that it was like "easier" for me to "move on" but now I realize that I never did move on, because I carried with me the beliefs, resentments, judgments, projections, assumptions, and fears with me for years now, projecting it all onto new friendships, fearing new friendships, being paranoid about new friendships, and engaging in beliefs about myself, what I am worth, what I can expect in my life in terms of friendships, not seeing realizing or understanding my responsibility in how all of this played out, and especially in how I chose to respond / react, how I chose to make myself a victim, how I chose to cut myself off from my friends, how I chose to not understand them in the fact that they missed hanging out with my ex, how I chose to create sides, how I chose to try to get others to take sides, how I chose to not understand my friends in terms of their experience with me in my depression, how I chose to put myself as my self interest first, how I chose not to look at myself but only to look at what others were doing wrong, and how I continue with all of these patterns today. 

Eventually I made one friend who was close enough that we decided to get an apartment together when our respective leases were up: a three bedroom with another girl she knew. It was in the same building again, but I actually can't recall now if my old friends had moved out by then or not. And so, as I say: life went on, and as such I continued leaving relationships and friendships in my wake.


More to write out on my life in relationships/friendships since college:

• Relationship with my roommate (La) freshman year of college
• Specific dynamic with her and my best friend (Je) from that year, the betrayal and paranoia breeding grounds
• Relationship with my first boyfriend (E) and its demise
• Relationship with my roommates during my junior year of college
• The transition from A to H to T. 
• Second boyfriend (Z)
• More drugs and an STD
• Threesome and consequences
• The rise and fall of my friendship with T, and revisiting what I learned from C
• Various other sexual encounters, none of which were within committed relationships
• Ja, Be, Jo, Br, back to Jo, Co, A
• Friendships in Denver (Li)
• The roommate I had here in Sacramento (K)
• D
• A relationship now with myself

I am not who I think I am. 

Then also to go back to high school, junior high, and elementary school friendships.


Other relationships to investigate:

• Relationship with myself as "depressed" -- the history of my self identification as depressed
• Introduction to and relationship with marijuana (intermittent and ongoing until about 6 months ago)
• Relationship with specific members of my family
• Triangling with mother and brother, especially freshman year of college, not to have been even remotely resolved until just this past year
• Overall relationship with sex
• Relationships with pets

Sunday: We Meet Again - Day 88

I am like in a battle with today. Me against today. Any task on the roster for today -- I do not want to do.

I know that in previous weeks/months I have really disliked Sundays because (1) it is the day before going back to work, (2) I have "always had a tendency" to "not do well" during extended periods of time off, and perhaps 2 days in a row off from work/school is sometimes "too much"? and (3) for the past couple of months I've had an obligation on Sundays which interfered with something else I actually wanted to do, so that was always a battle.

But now I am on break, so no work tomorrow. I had my last day at my old job on Thursday, and this is my THIRD day off in a row, oh my! And my aforementioned obligation has ended, so now I am free to attend the other event on Sundays which I actually "want" to attend.

For the past few months (basically since I stopped working retail and thus working on Sundays), if you look at my blog, Sunday tends to be the day that I experience highest depression rates. Highest laziness and apathy, really wanting to just stay in bed and sleep, wallow. I get like this little furrow in my brow that I don't even realize, and every single task, every moment, even every breath is like a battle, wherein I am basically complaining small and quiet (or sometimes quite loud) within myself "I don't want to" over and over and over again.

Why? Why am I fighting? What am I resisting? Isn't this my day? Aren't these my tasks? Am I not myself, am I not creating this fight? I even want to duck out of the event that I supposedly "want" to attend, in favor of sleeping, or in favor of clearing out my schedule enough to stop this pressure as this storm I am creating.

And what tends to happen is that I am engaging in all of this resistance, right, this fighting, and it's just like the resistance/fighting that happens sometimes in writing, where I'm like holding my breath. It's like this big dark cloud hanging over me of the tasks that I have to get done, and I don't allow myself to finally breathe and be "free" until either I have finally done the tasks or enough time has passed that I can with greater confidence justify for myself that the tasks simply will not get done today, so I excuse myself, and then I am allowed to come out from under my own thumb as this great pressure of these obligations against which I am fighting.

So today, this morning, I tossed and turned in bed, where my brow was already beginning to furrow, where in my frontal lobe I was already battling against known consequences and making supportive choices for myself, where I really really really want to just give in and give up and stay in bed. I "should" really get up. What time is it? Oh it's only 7. Okay well I can stay in bed. More tossing and turning, more brow furrowing, more engaging in battle in and as my mind. Time passes. Repeat.

I finally got up at 9:30 about, I think, mainly just within knowing that I "should" and also remembering that sometimes when I sleep too long, I get a migraine. I took a look at my to-do list, and I got to work. "Okay, I will just get things done, one by one." And I did. I cleaned! That's a rather "big" deal. I made a new calendar, too, that goes all the way up to my first day at my new job, so that I can map out and use this time effectively. I checked a few other things off my list. But my brow was still furrowed. I was still fighting. I still wanted to go back to bed.

"I don't know what I want to write about today. I don't really want to continue that series."
"I still don't know what to write about for my DIP Lite assignment. I don't like this section on memories."
"I should read some blogs... I could do this in bed... And then take a nap..."

I listened to some eqafe, which was also cool. It's not like I haven't had a productive day thus far. I have. So why am I still fighting? And in all of this fighting, why am I judging myself? I've listened to that interview about self-judgment 4 times now. Might listen 4 more times at least. What's with the fight? Why not just accept myself, embody myself, and move myself?

Obviously checking things off a list isn't "enough" to make me "feel okay." Obviously productivity isn't really the "answer" here. Obviously it is this battle I am engaging with in my mind against myself and against reality and against life. Obviously I am once again choosing not to "show up" for myself here and support myself, loving myself unconditionally, and stopping self judgment.


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to develop a pattern of battling with myself on Sundays, to develop an association with this day of the week and who I am on this day and what I am able to accomplish on this day, where it's like on Sundays I expect this battle, and rather than practically "preparing for battle" I instead gear up for defeat, and want to just give in and give up and wait for the day to be over so that I can move on.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a relationship with myself based in self judgment and conflict with myself where I am against myself and against life -- a battle I can never win.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that merely being productive is the solution, that by simply accomplishing tasks and checking them off my list, I will feel "satisfied" and like I am doing a good job, and the relentless self judgment will cease.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to thereby validate the self judgment as legitimate, and within this contingent on whether or not I am able to accomplish tasks that, left unaccomplished, I utilize to berate myself within beliefs about my inabilities to address practical self care.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that self judgment is specifically linked to the things about which I judge myself, and that in "solving" these things I can eradicate self judgment.

I forgive myself too that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that if I can at least accomplish these things on my to do list then I can "feel good about myself" and the other matters which are concerning me / to which I am reacting will not matter anymore.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to look at the root of self judgment as a mechanism to control me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create like a panopticon within my mind where I am always watching for reason to judge myself and reason to keep myself locked up within my self judgments and beliefs that I am not good enough or "I can't" or otherwise limiting myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to embody myself and support myself to see myself as where I can change and then to transcend those points and really actually change myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to trust myself or to trust the process of changing myself so that I can move through this process with consistency and stability but instead am constantly rocking the boat for myself, or allowing myself to destabilize from the "winds" of my reactions.

When and as I see myself giving up on an entire day, giving up on myself for an entire day, because of beliefs that I have established about myself in that moment or in that day as who I am and of what I am capable, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I move myself in each moment. I realize that within this I am limiting myself and am determining that I am incapable when in reality I am completely capable. I commit myself to investigating what beliefs I have established through writing and to support myself through and as my breath, continuing still to move through practical tasks that need to be accomplished, but understanding that the accomplishment of these tasks is not the solution. Instead I commit myself to be with, to "show up" for myself within these tasks and to see myself as I move through them, and to support myself through these times of resistance.

When and as I see myself furrowing my brow, I stop and I breathe. I relax. I ask myself why I am furrowing my brow -- what is happening behind that brow within my mind that I am using to justify an abdication of responsibility for myself? What beliefs am I creating and participating in when I am furrowing my brow? How does furrowing my brow like this indicate to me that I am engaging in a battle with myself and with reality and with life?

Showing Up for Myself Part 1.5: Abandoning Myself Through Participation in My Mind - Day 86

In yesterday's post (Showing Up for Myself Part 1: lONEliness - Day 85) I meandered into somewhat of a separate point in terms of the mind energy I create in thinking about other people and myself always in reference to other people, so I want to expand on that to clarify and specify because I think there is more to look at and figure out here... and then I will move on to the next point of showing up here in my writing process. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to always be looking outside myself at others, at how they are (how I perceive them to be), and to then judge myself based on this, like I need to be a certain way in order for them to come and rescue me, in order for them to think I am worth their time, so that they will come fill my void. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to always place myself in comparison to others, in the shadow of others, inferior to others, needing others, and within all of this denying, rejecting, disowning, and abandoning myself. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to consider others as their opinions, beliefs, likes, dislikes (or my perception/projection of these things, anyway), interests, hobbies, etc., and to then believe that this is better than who I am, like the person that I am in all of my interests, hobbies, appearance, opinions, beliefs, likes, and dislikes etc. is less than and inferior to all of these things of another person. So that here instead of asking myself what I think, or what I want, or who I am, I look to others to see who I perceive them to be, then define this as "better" and "superior" within the negligence to ask myself about myself, to look at myself, to be here with myself, to support myself in this moment of where I am within my mind. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to spend more time considering another person than I have spent considering myself within self honesty. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trust others absolutely and to not trust myself. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be within and as my mind with another person, thinking about that person, supporting another person through my beliefs about that person, like supporting them up to a higher level than myself by neglecting myself and believing this other person is greater than I, instead of supporting myself, being here with myself, as I am the only one who will ever really be here with me, and I am always with me. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that I am always here with me and I am my greatest source of support and stability -- my only constant source of support and stability -- I am support and stability for myself within and as myself.

So what all of this interrelates with is this tendency that I have to identify another person -- either a crush or even just a potential friend, or someone I am jealous of -- and then to think about that person and think about basically how I can get them to like me, what are they like and then how can I emulate this or behave in ways that I believe will make them like me, or if they have interests different from mine or if I project/assume/believe that they would respond/react to a certain idea or situation a certain way, perhaps different from how I would, I automatically go into this belief that their way of being is superior to my way of being, and then into wanting to change and meld myself into someone who they would approve of -- all the while assuming thus that they would disapprove of who I am, and within this I am disapproving of who I am, not accepting myself, not being here with myself to support myself as who I am within self honesty, but rejecting myself in favor of who I perceive another to be.

So I compromise myself in order to create myself in an image that I believe my projected/perceived image of this other person would "want" or "like" me to be. So it is in these fantasies/imaginations of how I can obtain/attain this friendship or relationship or another's approval that am effectively actively abandoning myself, not being here with myself as who I am within self honesty but am instead creating another in my mind and then trying to create myself in that other's image with the belief that the other is better and therefore I should be more like the other, either for the other to like me or for other people who seem to like the specific other to like me (jealousy). All of this, obviously, is images/ideas in my mind interacting with other images/ideas in my mind. None of it is real. None of it is here with myself in self honesty, self responsibility, and self support.

So I am exiting reality THROUGH my mind (as opposed to exiting OUT OF my mind into reality) in and as my thoughts about others/another, imaginations of others/another, thus abandoning myself as here in the physical as reality as life, and also abusing myself through the thoughts/beliefs of my mind wherein I create myself as less than and others as greater than, such thus that I am abusing all life in my participation in inequality and separation.

This happens in other instances as well, obviously: going into my mind in a participation within jealousy/envy, desire/lust, anger/blame, imaginations/remembrances of conflict -- in all of these I am not here with myself in the physical in the present moment as my breath -- in all of these I am creating relationships within my mind which are based in inequality -- in all of these I am abandoning myself in favor of investing myself into my participation in all of this, divesting myself of my own self as my presence with and unification with myself, and so it is no wonder that I feel so alone, so afraid, so helpless, and thus so depressed, so often.


So here I see that part of "showing up" for myself, being here with myself, reuniting with myself as one as equal as life, involves stopping my participation within my mind as thoughts that are fueled by jealousy or inferiority complexes, or participating in imaginary realities based in desire/lust, or anger and conflict and blame, because each time that I engage myself in the creation and participation of these things, I am leaving myself in the physical and existing instead in my mind, thus reinforcing the idea/belief that I am not worthy even of my own love and support, thus creating the voids which I seek for others to fill.


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hear a song or see a picture or movie or some other stimulus in my environment, have it remind me of someone, and then to consider what that other person might think, whether they would like or dislike this thing, and then to believe that I should respond to the stimulus in the same way that I have imagined they would respond, within this believing thus that the other is an ideal model which I should emulate, thus denying myself self-expression or the ability to have my own responses within self honesty as who I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to spend a lot of time in mind considering another person as who I believe them to be and to compare myself to them within the belief that they are better than I am, most often, although sometimes I also denigrate them within my mind and build myself up, within both instances creating and participating in inequality and separation of living beings who are actually one and equal as life, thus creating justifications for the denigration of life -- my own or others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abandon myself continually by leaving my physical body within my awareness of who and where I am and instead existing within and as my mind, where here I create beliefs about myself and others, project images of myself onto others, and develop relationships within my mind outside of physical reality, giving myself reasons for continuing in jealousy, continuing in self doubt, continuing in desire/lust, continuing in hope, continuing in fear, continuing in anger, etc.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to basically dig out craters within myself as voids and to give these parts of myself to others through my beliefs about them and energy I put toward these beliefs/imaginations and thus within this believe that it is others who can fill these voids, that another must come along and tell me I am okay and make me feel whole, when I am the one who has created the holes and divided myself against myself.


When and as I see myself drifting off into my mind within considerations of another which are based in false assumptions, imaginations, and projections, and are designed to reinforce inequality and separation of myself from others as life, I stop and I breathe. I commit myself to return to my breath, returning my awareness to my physical body, returning my intention to self-support, and turning any or all points back to myself to see what my beliefs/imaginations/projections really say about me. I commit myself to stop denigrating myself or disparaging others, to stand with and as myself as one as equal as life, to continue to investigate what this really means, and to see, realize, and understand others also as one, equal, life, as what is best for all.


I sense there is still more to sort out or clarify/specify here, but unless I have some remarkable realization before tomorrow evening, I will finally get to the next part of this little series.