Being Spineless, Turning Conflict Inward, & Punishing Myself - Day 103

What a whirlwind of about 30 hours... I have engaged in a LOT of reaction and so here I am writing it out for anyone to see. It is not all pretty and it is not all age appropriate, haha.

For context see A Wrench in My Plans or A Bump in the Road - Day 102


Written this morning: 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel anxious and nervous about having to deal with my apartment manager today, having to face him and face this situation / "problem."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I will just give up and suppress myself in an effort to make for like "smooth sailing" so that there is not conflict, to just sweep it under the rug like I saw done so many times in my family with conflict, to swallow my feelings and push it all down / bottle it up so that this conflict can just be over with.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create this relationship with "conflict" that centers around anxiety, nervousness, and fear.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to evade this situation by leaving my apartment and going somewhere else.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to evade facing this situation by asking a friend or relative to come over and help me talk to my apartment manager because I am so fearful that I will mess it up or become reactive or will just suppress and be okay with him continuing to do whatever shitty job he wants to do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself then to also fear how whomever I might ask to come help me might react to my apartment manager, where if it is my mom I become afraid that she will also bend over and sweep it all under the rug, allowing herself to be manipulated into sympathy, or if it is my brother or my mom's boyfriend they will become angry and reactive which also will not assist in a practical best for all resolution to this "problem."

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to believe that I am capable of finding and/or facilitating such a solution.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed now at the idea of possibly moving, of where I would move, of thinking of moving to the apartment complex that my brother is about to move into, which is a nice apartment complex, but then also to think about how I prefer to keep some distance between myself and my brother because I am not good at establishing boundaries and I fear that I will get too wrapped up in his problems or that he will insert himself into my life more than I want.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to just stand clear in stability as myself no matter what is happening around me, so that in this situation of "conflict" I can navigate the communication in self honesty and self responsibility, or within the potential of being my brother's neighbor I could set clear boundaries as what is best for all.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to learn, imprint, and adopt what I saw in my mother in terms of a failure to set clear boundaries that are fair, self honest, based in equality and oneness, are self responsible, and are what is best for all.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, despite always watching my mother lack a spine and criticizing her and believing that I can see clearly what she should do, nonetheless collapse within my own life where it is like I extract my own spine or believe it to not be there so that I cannot stand clear, tall, in stability within myself in setting boundaries for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to bend over backwards to meet the needs of others, allowing myself to be manipulated by the emotional states of others, allowing myself to feel and then act on feelings of sympathy for others, so that I neglect and reject myself as my own self care, self support, and my actual practical needs, and also thusly reject, neglect, deny what is best for all in equality and oneness and in my obligation to take responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself build up nervous energy about this situation so that I am then acting on nervous energy, trying to navigate strategically how I can like "win" in this situation where to "win" means to get my way / what I want / what is owed to me as a paying tenant, but also because of the nervous energy to "win" means to one-up the other person, to convince myself within interaction / communication that I am "right" so that the nervous energy will dissipate, because the nervous energy is fear that I am wrong.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I am "wrong" where within this fear I am fearing that my needs are not substantial or valid, that my perspective is not valid, that the services I pay for should not actually be given to me because I do not matter, I am just in the way, I am causing trouble, these are not real problems.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to learn and carry with me this dynamic from my family where what I saw as problematic within my family was denied by other members of my family as well as friends and acquaintances, so that no problem / conflict was ever properly faced / addressed, so that I became very confused and paranoid because what I saw in the reality around me did not match / line up with what others communicated to me about reality, and also what I experienced within myself as my emotions and fears and reactions were not validated by the people around me as appropriate / expected given the circumstances.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt myself as who I am within conflict because I believe that my experiences and perspectives do not matter because in the past they did not matter, what I said / saw made no difference to anyone whatsoever and in fact only threatened myself as my ability to sustain myself / survive because what mechanisms I used to "cope" were self-abusive, but I knew no other way.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to turn conflict inward on myself such that when I am facing outer conflict in interactions with other people, I react in such a way that I turn the conflict in on myself, not trusting myself, doubting myself, believing myself to be the problem, believing that the fact that I have identified a problem is what is problematic to others, and thus wanting to punish myself, shut myself up, believing I am stupid and in the way, and why can't I just deal with this by myself and not bother anyone else with my stupid petty problems.

I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself thus to become all the more defensive and reactive as I am believing that others do not see my perspective or experiences as valid and so as I perceive an attack from outside and also suffer from my own attacks on myself, my defenses grow and I become more reactive.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to run through these patterns as this program of conflict within myself as my reactions to conflict rather than breathing and facing "conflict" for what it is as the interactions / communication required to navigate an identified problem in reality with another person / system.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to retreat into myself through reaction and then beliefs/judgments about myself or about the situation / "conflict" so that within this I am not "showing up" here in the present reality moment to face what is happening or to follow through on that which is required of me in order to support myself in self honest self responsibility, but instead am still utilizing the coping mechanisms within my mind of reaction, judgment, blame, and self-abusive thoughts.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I do not know what to do within this situation such that I have created like this road block / mental block in terms of considering my options and investigating what is best, and instead have created a reliance / dependency on having another decide for me, which in this case is most likely to be my mom or another member of my family, who will be reactive within wanting to "protect" me and want to enable me to evade conflict by removing me from a situation that they identify as "bad" rather than assisting and supporting me to actually face the conflict and also to face myself to come up with my own self honest solution for myself, to determine for myself what is best, as this would be real support and assistance, as opposed to simply encouraging the removal of myself from the situation, which is often what is suggested even in for example conflict with friends, like "you don't need that in your life," rather than seeing myself as my responsibility in the creation of the conflict, taking responsibility for myself in that build up, and then also taking responsibility for myself within finding a self honest solution that is best for all, which may or may not be removal from the situation.


So I commit myself to really breathe deep slow breaths and be here with myself in my human physical body in physical reality as accomplishing that which must be accomplished in reality -- not what I identify as needing to be accomplished in my mind as my emotional reactions / fears -- and to write out / investigate my options and consider what it is that I would really like to do.

Do I want to move? Where to? Why or why not?
Do I want to talk to the landlord about my apartment manager? What would I say? Why or why not?

I need to talk to my apartment manager, obviously. What do I say? How do I say it? What outcomes need to be supported? What outcomes are self-interested and based on my emotional reactions?

Do I want to live somewhere that my apartment manager and other neighbors sexually harass me, although I have never communicated that I identify it as such? Do I want to live somewhere that my apartment manager talks to my neighbors about me in a negative way? Do I want to live somewhere that the apartment manager is not supported to do his job with integrity, and who seemingly would not do his job with integrity even if he was supported? Do I want to live somewhere that the apartment manager is manipulative with complaints of his physical and emotional well-being, where I allow myself to generate sympathy toward him and then act based on that sympathy to like cut him some slack or give him a break, which really benefits no one as it leaves me high and dry in terms of services for which I pay and allows him to continue to abdicate responsibility for himself and creates probability that this will happen to someone else? What of that is my responsibility? Is it most self responsible to just move, and let other consequences flow as they might for others involved? Am I trying to get my hands dirty? Are my hands already dirty? Can I live here even under these circumstances of not trusting my apartment manager? Is that setting myself up for disaster if I cannot clear myself of my lack of trust and a high probability for a build up of resentment? What if something breaks in my apartment and I have to deal with him again?

What is it that I like so much about living here that I am attached to even despite all of the many reasons that I do not particularly like living here?

"Pros":
It is a great location in terms of groceries, family, work, and access to the bike trail. I enjoy my hard wood floors but for reasons well within my control I have not utilized them for practicing yoga at home as was the intended purpose of finding an apartment with hard wood floors (my #1 priority on my list when I was apartment hunting in December) -- so now if I leave it will be like "all for nothing". There is a big park next door where people let their dogs run around off leash and this is great for Hazel. The apartment itself is big and I have finally established furniture arrangements that I like and I have finally cleared points that were previously preventing me from enjoying this space (again, I can do this anywhere, but it is frustrating!).

"Cons":
However I do not get cell reception in my apartment and that is very frustrating. My neighbors are pretty sketchy and most are decidedly drug addicts, which is fine, but I do not always feel safe as there has been a history of break ins by neighbors. Another neighbor also repeatedly sexually harasses me. My next door neighbors / friends are moving soon anyway. There is a pool here but I do not use it because it is dirty and I do not wish to invite further sexual harassment by walking around in a bathing suit (walking around in yoga clothes is bad enough).

The apartments I most likely could move into are actually the same ones I lived in when I first moved back from Denver, but due to employment problems I had to break my lease and move back in with my mom briefly, then get a roommate. Now they are under new management (which is great because I did not particularly care for the old management, although either way there are MANY people on staff as opposed to here where there is just this one man who is expected to take care of everything) and are even a little less expensive than they used to be (less expensive in fact than where I live now). They are across the street from my brother/sister-in-law/nieces' house, and my other brother will be moving into the complex very soon (I have thought about getting a 2 bedroom with him but since I have reservations even about being his neighbor I am not sure I am ready to take on being his roommate). They are still a decent location, but just farther away from the freeway and bike trail. They are very nice and have 3 big well maintained pools, a fitness center, and even a yoga/aerobics room (they are like "resort/luxury style living" haha which made me feel a little strange living there but it's not that it wasn't pleasant!). They also have washer and dryer in the unit! However, they have carpet. This really shouldn't be as big a problem as it is. In fact with hard wood floors I have even gotten a little frustrated/annoyed hearing hazel's nails click all over the place, and as I said I have yet to use the floors for yoga (except for just one time), so why am I so attached? (Also my mom's boyfriend says we could easily create like a pseudo hard wood space big enough for yoga.) I created that attachment as establishing the ideal so many months ago. I do enjoy them and I was gearing up to start my home yoga practice again, so again it is like another lost opportunity of finally making this apartment work for me and now to just up and leave feels like taking something away right after I have finally just grasped it, having to start over. But this is self limitation.


Written this evening: 

It is now later and I have spoken with my apartment manager also with my mom and her boyfriend. My mom suggested I not try to seek him out until they got there, but to just wait and see if he would follow through and otherwise have my day and we would talk once they arrived. He did not contact me all day even though he said he would finish the job this morning. However I trapped myself within the thought that I did not want to not be here if he were to finally show up / be ready to complete the job, so with this I held myself captive in my own apartment allowing all of my reactions to fester however consciously or subconsciously. I wrote this morning as you saw but by the time this late afternoon came I was still very reactive.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sit around all day and wait to see if my apartment manager would contact me and follow through and to participate in back chat that of course he will not, he is irresponsible and childish, and now I am wasting a whole day by sitting around waiting for him, refusing to leave and go do things I want to do because I do not want to not be here if he decides to show.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see that I am wasting time and to basically act like a victim within this, pretending that it is not my choice to waste this time but that I am being held captive to my irresponsible apartment manger's whims about when he might decide to actually do his job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be bitter and resentful even within the self forgiveness that I am writing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to fester in my reactions, emotions, and back chats all day such that when my mom and her boyfriend finally showed up I was very riled up with the realization that okay, it's go time, time to actually do this, let's go find him and talk to him.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be riled up and to use this as an excuse to send my mom and her boyfriend in front of me, asking that they lead the way because I am too riled up, only to then poke my head around my mom to interject my angry accusations or arguments in reaction to what my apartment manager is saying.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to assume that he had been laughing about me with another neighbor and not with a personal friend of his as he has now claimed, so that I became even more upset and irate that there was a breach in privacy / confidentiality and included another person in this conflict in my mind as a target of my anger without first knowing the truth of who he had meant to send that text message to.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see and realize and try to understand his side, where even though I have been very sympathetic I have also been very reactive and self interested, so that I ignored the possibility that he might really be under pressure, he might fear unemployment, he might have some other reason within his own memories and his own mind to believe that I am threatening his employment -- thus explaining his interpretation of me and my communication and thus shedding light on who he is and why he is the way he is, so that I do not simply go into judgment and assumption about him and how he is "just irresponsible" and other reactive judgments.


After it was said and done my mom's boyfriend pointed out how it was like a family squabble, not a business transaction. I agree. I felt annoyed that he didn't decide to speak up and change the direction of the conversation, but moreso upset with myself for engaging in this personal battle rather than a professional one, once again blurring these lines between personal/professional, also feeling embarrassed for having been reactive and like "getting on his level" by participating in the dynamic.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become reactive and upset and personally invested in the outcome of the words that are spoken such that I want to speak points that will let me "win" in the argument and that will force him to see my side and to admit he is wrong. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to enter into like a family style squabble, straying away from the professional business matters at hand in terms of an exchange of money for services, where I am his customer and he is expected to provide certain services to me as a tenant.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget about certain points that I would have liked to bring up like for example why there are no work orders to keep track of who has requested maintenance first and to write out contracts basically for work that must be done so as to have a common understanding of expectations and what happens if those expectations are not met.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become invested in and try to direct my apartment manager's relationship with his supervisors, which he clearly does not navigate well, rather than focusing on my relationship with my apartment manager, in which I am participating in having very poor navigation as well.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I must maintain this position as on the other side of the buffer that is my apartment manager where, because of the sympathy that I feel toward him and his situation, I do not want to go above him to talk to his boss to complain about the lack of quality services I am receiving as compared to what is contained in my rental contract.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sit around all day basically punishing myself with my own emotions and reactions and thoughts and back chat, so that my apartment manager is not affected by any of this nor expected to actually face the problem, but instead I am just forcing myself to exist within and as all of this negative energy, punishing and abusing myself all day and also not accomplishing the things I would like to have accomplished, all the while blaming my apartment manager for this and also setting myself up to regret the way that I used my time today so that tomorrow I might blame him as well.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to now not want to deal with this or see or speak to my apartment manager again because I have become so frustrated and reactive and I feel like almost traumatized, by which I simply mean that my typical reaction to conflict is to treat it as if it is traumatic and thus to retreat / evade / not face myself as who I have been in the conflict, as how I have accepted and allowed it to affect me, but continue on in belief that it is like this force that has come in and affected me against my will.

I forgive myself thus for not accepting or allowing myself to be forgiving of myself or others within conflict, but always allowing conflict to be like the beginning of the end of any relationship because I am so afraid of facing conflict / facing myself / facing another within conflict. Must continue more with conflict, although I'm sure there will be ample opportunity.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, within the realization that it was more like a family squabble than a business conversation, reflect on conflict with my dad and what this means, as if it means something big and ominous, like this guy represents my dad or something, and also I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel embarrassed at my reactivity and to fear that this means that others can get me or see my weakness, when actually that kind of is what it means, because here I am showing others how they can use me to sabotage myself, if they can simply push the right buttons I will self destruct.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to self destruct, to be my own worst enemy, rather than supporting myself unconditionally, standing absolute in self honest self responsibility and stability.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create now a new negative relationship with my lived environment which has also reverted some of the work I did in recent days in regards to my relationship with my home environment where now I am still looking around and seeing it as dark and gloomy and depressing, because that is how I feel, and so I am looking around and blaming the physical space for this reaction. So here I commit myself to re-read what I had written previously, to sound my self forgiveness on this issue, and to re-commit myself to the commitments I made there in regards to supporting myself and taking responsibility for myself in my home environment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to feel like my whole week before my new job is ruined, and like once I start my new job it's like my life is over, and this is all the free time I will ever have, and I can't control any of it the way I want to so it's just like a big disaster and the world is over.

Here I commit myself to walking out of my mind into the physical as my breath as what is here with me in the physical, which is actually pretty fucking great -- I am very lucky. I commit myself also to support myself in preparation for my job and accomplishing what needs to be accomplished before then.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to prove a point and have another person feel the pain of the consequences of their actions such that I would rather be mean and reactive, believing this to be effective, not realizing that reaction breeds reaction and this will only make the other person more defensive and more resolute in their position, and within this I forgive myself thus for accepting and allowing myself to be annoyed that my mom was too nice and that the conversation ended on too nice of terms because I was still riled up and I was still angry and I wanted everyone else to suffer the way I was making myself suffer.

So I AGAIN forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want others to suffer. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to suffer. I have accepted it and allowed it, indeed created it, and so therefore I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to WANT myself to suffer, where here I realize that what I want for others is what I want for myself, and vice versa. What the fuck's with that? This keeps coming up so I will have to address it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe that if I make the DECISION, as in I CHOOSE, to move to a different apartment in response/reaction to this situation, that it is not of my own volition, that it is like something is being taken from me, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to once AGAIN victimize myself within my own decisions, blaming external forces for the ways that I limit/move/direct myself, creating myself as like a hostage to things I believe I cannot control when in fact they are manufactured and manifested by me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to imprison myself within my mind in my reactions, manifesting this imprisonment onto my physical body as believing that my external reality as the choices I make for my self direction is inflicted upon me against my will. This is NOT SELF SUPPORT, and it is NOT SELF HONEST. It is NOT SELF RESPONSIBLE.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to the ways that my apartment manager flip flopped and said words to suit whatever he was trying to convince us of, so that he contradicted himself within his own arguments in order to evade responsibility, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto this like look at all he did wrong, as if this then makes it excusable for me to behave in ways that are irresponsible within my anger and reactivity, and also to distract myself from moving forward and taking care of myself / supporting myself and taking responsibility for myself but instead to just hold on to these words that I heard spoken by him and thinking about how wrong he is and how he's this and that rather than looking at myself and seeing what I can do, how I can support myself, how I can take responsibility for myself, how I can resolve this situation for myself without relying or depending on anyone outside myself. Because I can. I absolutely can.


So here I commit myself to stop, and breathe. Stop, and breathe. Stop myself as my reactions, thoughts, judgments, projections, and allow myself to walk through the emotions to clear them. Breathe. I commit myself to giving myself self care, to taking care also of the responsibilities which are in front of me which I can address, to not allowing this little road bump to become like a road block, to keep myself moving forward as my own self directive principle, and to continue to write out these reactions in consideration of this development as this relationship with my apartment manager as well as my lived environment. I commit myself to patience within this process to reject any sense of urgency I may develop because I see that the moment I allow a sense of urgency is the moment I allow myself to become in opposition to physical reality, because I cannot change things in an instant -- it doesn't work like that.

I commit myself to, within my breathing practice, realize that I direct myself, I create my experiences. I commit myself thus to realize and understand that I make choices for myself and so I am responsible for those choices. I commit myself thus to make self-supportive self-responsible self-honest choices, not allowing myself to blame others for my circumstances or for my reactions to my circumstances but to realize that I direct myself and thus create my experiences.

I commit myself also to re-reading what I wrote about grudges because I see that I am developing like an absolute negative energy against my apartment manager where I want to blame him for all of my reactions and what has come to pass within this project and I want to just stay sooo mad at him so that I can justify my anger and justify any little reason to become more upset because look at this awful thing that happened that he did!!! I realize this is incredibly immature and irresponsible. I realize that within this I am maintaining that lack of discrepancy between what is personal versus professional. So I commit myself to coming back to myself in my breath and also to turning the points back on myself as an opportunity to see myself: Why am I reacting like this? What memories are coming up? What beliefs? Judgments?

I commit myself to self care and gentleness with myself in my emotionally sensitive state. I commit myself to consideration of what else is coming here in this conflict as memories of conflict with my dad. I commit myself to staying here with myself and understanding that when I want to cry in another's arms and have another comfort me -- I can do this for myself. So I commit myself to holding myself and comforting myself and telling myself, thus trusting myself, that everything really will be okay, everything already is okay, this is really not even a big deal except that I have made it a big deal, and another person not taking responsibility for themselves is not an excuse for me to not take responsibility for myself. I commit myself to take responsibility for myself in all dimensions of this situation such as self care, self forgiveness, self responsibility within this situation as well as within the points that come up, communication and interaction, rejection of thoughts and emotions that lead to the generation of a grudge, rejection of thoughts and emotions that lead to spite and vindication; I commit myself thus to stability in and as my breath with myself in my human physical body.

I am my home just as all of existence is my home, the home of all, one and equal. So I also commit myself thus to oneness and equality within an understanding of what is best for all, rejecting my ego as my desire to be right or win an argument or make another person suffer or make myself suffer.



I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to remain on the surface of all of these points above within my writing today such that I was still writing within reaction and based in large part on assumptions/judgments/beliefs/projections, so that whatever conclusions I thought I found were only enforcing my reactive state rather than finding and coming into my breath as finding a solution that is best for all within absolute self responsibility and stability.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become frustrated and irritated during my drive home yesterday when I hit a lot of traffic and also when the pet store I tried to go to right before coming home ended up being closed so that when I arrived home and saw what was to be faced there with my apartment manager and the mess, I was already in an emotional state of stress and irritation so that I was primed and ready to go straight to reaction in this situation.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe/project that my brother or mom's boyfriend would be too reactive and thus ineffectual, when in reality this is how I was, and I also forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to overlook the value in being calm and kind where this can actually be more effective in reaching common understanding in conflict.

I commit myself to continuing to write on this conflict and my reactions if necessary and continuing to see my responsibility within all that has come to pass. This really really really did not need to blow up so big. So I commit myself to seeing how I detonated this bomb.

A Wrench in My Plans or a Bump in the Road - Day 102

I've now returned from Tahoe (7/28) and have come home to find that my apartment manager has not finished the project he was supposed to finish two days ago, and also my entire apartment, except my bedroom because the door was closed, is covered in dust from the grout mixture from tiling my shower walls (which had to be replaced because the previous walls were caving in / rotting). I became very very very frustrated with this and felt like it put a huge wrench in my whole plan that I delineated on Day 99. I tried to keep pretty calm and just express my interpretation of the problem to my apartment manager to see what solutions we could find, and had relative success in this, so that is in the works.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become reactive as angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, and feeling like my plans for how to use my time in organizing my apartment are ruined.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become reactive with emotions that do not do anything to actually practically solve the problem in front of me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed with emotions and then to use these emotions as a bridge to other emotions that have been coming up inside me so that I almost allowed myself to decide that it was "all too much" and almost allowed myself to just break down dramatically because of "everything that has been wrong" where here I wanted to cry and whine and complain and feel sorry for myself rather than supporting myself and taking responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that this means I cannot continue with the plans I laid out in Day 99.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that this ruins my last week of vacation / break time before starting my new job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go from my reaction to this specific situation into creating emotional energy about my experiences living in this apartment, in this complex, with this manager as a whole.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to consider briefly simply moving, as my mom suggested I do since there are "all these problems here," and to within this thought become very overwhelmed and frustrated and angry because I have not really been settled in a home anywhere for almost 2 years now, and I do not like being in limbo / transition, I really want to just be settled and have stability in my living arrangement.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create and maintain instability in my living environments for reasons of my own creation, including like as discussed in Day 100, so that when things like this happen which are outside of my control, I become not only reactive about the situation in front of me but also activate a build up of anger at myself for having neglected to get myself settled here after all this time.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have a negative relationship with my home as my physical environment and then to become attached to the idea of getting settled here such that now the thought/idea of moving is frustrating / overwhelming and I am vacillating between polarities of disliking my environment vs not wanting to leave.



I'm not going to move, I don't think, and after deciding to simply clean off my work space and kitchen and to set myself to the tasks I had decided to accomplish today, I am seeing that this "problem" is not really that big a deal and that my reaction was not really necessary / did not assist me or my apartment manager in resolving the problem. Nonetheless there are some practical expectations with renting and repairs, so I still have to figure out what exactly to do here. My mom wants to complain to the landlord so that the landlord will hopefully see that he is expecting too much of the apartment manager, but I do not want to do this if it will get the apartment manger "in trouble," but then this isn't really my responsibility either way. I am a tenant who pays rent on time and it is appropriate to expect certain quality of work and to expect that my living space be habitable / my belongings not be damaged in any way, no? Undecided on how to proceed.


When and as I see myself becoming frustrated with an unexpected "problem" / "wrench" in my plans and feeling like this ruins my plans, I stop and I breathe. I realize that things come up and that I must assist and support myself through these points as they arise. I realize that it is very unlikely that my plans are actually ruined, they simply must be adjusted. So I commit myself to assisting myself with my breath and writing if necessary, and to address the first problem that it makes sense to address. I commit myself to seeing how I must rearrange / adjust my plans and doing so. I commit myself to not going into a reaction of overwhelmingness where I want to give up and scratch the whole thing just because of this one bump in the road. I commit myself to flexibility with movement and existence within the present moment, where sometimes (often) things happen that are not planned / foreseen / in my control.

I commit myself also to realizing how often I am my own wrench in my plans, how often I create my own problems, how often I deter myself from my own path, and so I commit myself to continuing to learn how to direct myself in self honesty as my own self directive principle and not to be influenced / swayed by my emotional states / reactions such that I neglect my responsibilities / the things that I have established for myself as wanting to accomplish.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become shaky within the perceived "conflict" in having to have this conversation with my apartment manager.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect that this conversation would not go well and so to fear engaging in it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become frustrated at the evasive conversational style of my apartment manager where he did not really want to take responsibility for the ineffectualness of his work in this project or for the fact that the methods he used left a thick layer of dust throughout my apartment on all of my belongings.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel sympathetic toward my apartment manager because I know how much work he has to do and how he works far beyond that which he is paid, and he is depressed and stressed and is not doing well with his physical health.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, within this sympathy, want to just tell him it's okay and basically just suppress my reaction and pretend like it isn't a big deal just to not make him upset or give him more stress / grief, deal with the mess myself and just move on.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to also however be quite mad and irate with the quality of his work and the consequences as the inconvenience/hassle to me / mess on my belongings as well as his lack of communication, so that I had a difficult time balancing my reactions which made it difficult to engage in conversation from a starting point of self honesty and stability in consideration of what is best for all.


I really feel bad for the guy; he has way too much work on his plate and I know his personal life is in shambles as well. There are things he could and should have done differently but he is also not receiving any support from the landlord and the expectations of his duties are unreasonably high. So it is hard for me to tell what is best, even though as a tenant it seems obvious that I should not have to deal with this: damage of my personal belongings, ineffective communication of schedule of project, ineffective/combative communication about what is happening, and possible/probable unsafe air to breathe for myself and my dog. I do feel satisfied at the results of our conversation however and he knows that I am not upset with him personally and that I understand the circumstances of why/how this panned out the way it did. So it would seem that everything is going to be okay. Obviously it is not the end of the world. I have a place to live and things to get dusty.


When and as I see myself with conflicting emotions/feelings in regards to a point of communication, I stop and I breathe. I breathe and I consider in self honesty what is my responsibility here, how am I reacting and what is actually supportive of the situation. I commit myself to writing if I have the opportunity and otherwise to tread lightly and carefully, communicating myself clearly, taking ownership for the emotions I am displaying and acknowledging that they are just reactions. I commit myself to finding what it is that really needs to be addressed in communication and finding a mutual understanding within that point.


---


And now later I have had further interaction via text with my apartment manager in which it has become clear that he has been talking about me behind my back to another tenant and wants to laugh with this person about me within this situation. (He accidentally sent a text to me that was meant for another tenant about coming over and reading "what the red head tenant I did the tile for said....lol.")


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel bad for my apartment manager and within this excuse him from the duties of his job for which he is paid (the scale of which is none of my business / not my responsibility) and for which I pay my rent.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in a blurring of the boundaries between what is professional and personal such that I have been friendly toward my apartment manager and sympathetic and allowed him to do a bad job because I feel bad for him, and also have offered him some of my own food because I know that he is not taking care of himself through feeding himself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself therefore to participate in this blurring of boundaries which it is clear that he is participating in heavily within his work/living arrangement here so that I am also participating in this so that I cannot say that I am not responsible for this dynamic where he believes he can get away with doing a shitty job because we are on friendly terms.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and allow shitty workmanship when higher quality is expected within my lease agreement and my consistency in following through on my end of the contract so that I have set a precedent that it is okay for my apartment manager to not follow through on his end of the contract because I have accepted and allowed this blurring of boundaries of professional/personal relationships.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to suppress my reaction to him calling me "sweetie" or other things he has said/done that have "creeped me out" such that I have probably actually behaved in ways that have indicated to him that I am uncomfortable which he has then been left to interpret however, so that here I have participated in the creation of a dishonest communication between myself and my apartment manager by not setting boundaries and keeping those boundaries in terms of comfort, respect, and professionalism.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to let these things that "creep me out" and also the shitty workmanship to "slide" so that now I see there are consequences where there are secrets on both ends where clearly my apartment manager does not actually think/feel about me the way that he displays openly by being nice and calling me "sweetie" and acting grateful for my sympathy, and also as I have described above I have opposing energies in regards to my apartment manager and who he is and the job he does where I feel both angry and fed up but also sympathetic and protective (enabling).

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really take responsibility for myself in my living arrangement through communication, relationships, and establishing appropriate expectations/boundaries.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be swayed by the manipulation of this person who has not wanted to face himself / me and take responsibility for his work ethic or the results of his work but has tried to avoid direct conversation and has sought to appease me through being nice / also showing that he is in physical and emotional pain.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel both angry and sympathetic, to want to make things easier on someone else at my own expense while suppressing my anger so that my anger does come out in some form eventually.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in the creation of these consequences which have come to pass in this recent development.


See more photos and explanation here. 



This is also very frustrating because I have JUST established for myself to really finally actually get settled here and enjoy living here and make this space my own. Like I have cleared all these points on living here and how to make this place work (although these same points apply to any place I could live) and now this comes up where I am not sure I feel comfortable living here with an apartment manager like this.


One definite drawback to living here, aside from the other obvious ones, is that I do not get cell phone reception in my apartment. This has been quite frustrating in terms of keeping in touch with people, making plans, and also making necessary phone calls for various things. So I suppose one thing I can do is write out all the pros/cons / different sides of this situation to see if I can determine what is best / makes the most sense.

Blaming My Physical Environment for Who I Am - Day 100

Sharing from a DIP Lite assignment which was also gleaned from some of this SF that I had already written:

I have been doing some writing about how I look at my environment when I feel depressed and how I project my emotional state onto my environment, where I identify different aspects of the environment and then judge them as 'bad' and then believe that they are why I feel depressed. Within this I also reflect on places I have lived before almost always in a 'positive light' so that I am comparing where I live now to where I have lived before within the belief that "if I still lived there, I would be happy or happier," not realizing of course that I was also depressed there, and that my environment does not determine who I am -- I do.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, even in explaining in the above box, think "but that apartment really WAS so much better, and brighter, and I had that big nice window."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit the physical space of this apartment by keeping my blinds closed because in this apartment I am on the first floor and so I fear people looking into my apartment and also I am paranoid about my neighbors knowing I am home and wanting to hang out when I do not want to hang out, because I have not developed self honesty within myself in terms of telling others what I do or do not want to do without feeling like I have to have an excuse or feeling like I am being rude or impolite. So I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed other aspects of who I have accepted and allowed myself to be to influence and manifest limitations within my physical environment, when I would really like to have the blinds open and let some light in and be able to see outside, but I do not do this because of fear and paranoia, and instead blame the environment because I wish I was not on the first floor or I wish that I had windows in different locations, when really the location of these windows is actually not bad in terms of privacy.

So I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to put myself in a lose-lose situation in my physical environment where the only conceivable 'way out' is to go back in time to an old apartment or to move to a different apartment, rather than simply walking my way out of my mind and into the physical here, living in this apartment as it is, fully functional to meet my basic needs and a lot more -- far more than I "need."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to distort my memory of myself and my experiences in such a way where I believe that my experiences in a different environment and my judgments of that environment were really so different from the experiences and judgments I have now, where actually if I remember detached from emotions or feelings, I remember that I was also depressed there and that I felt like my apartment was just a hopeless mess even then, a reflection of believing that I am a hopeless mess projected onto my environment.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to really live within this apartment and "make it my own" and make it a space where I feel comfortable and "at home," where again this is analogous to really living within myself, taking responsibility for myself, feeling comfortable and at home within myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to reflect on and remember past living environments, regardless of how "good" or "bad" they "really were" or how "good" or "bad" my experiences within them were, reflecting on them as if they were "good" and therefore setting myself up for failure in where I am now in comparison to the past, believing then that I can only have what I believe I had then, if I could go back in time, or move back into that apartment, or one like it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that my environment determines who I am, and that I have not accepted or allowed myself to realize how much I impact and determine my environment, so that if I see something within my environment that I do not like, I can change it, like open up the blinds, add more lights, put art on the walls, clean up messes, unpack boxes, etc.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make choices for myself in my daily life that are not self supportive.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create associations with people and places and events within my mind in ways that create a "reality" for myself that is dark, negative, and suffocating.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist within and as my mind in these dark, negative, suffocating environmental "realities" rather than coming out of my mind into the physical where I can breathe, and see my environment for what it is, without applying to it judgments and limitations, within this judging and limiting myself as I live in this environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see that my apartment is kind of dark and I have no overhead lighting, and to then tell myself that this is a "dark place" where "dark" no longer has physical meaning but has a kind of mind definition of being bad and negative and ominous. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the physical level of light within my home space in such a way where I believe that this is just "a depressing place" and to then move myself within this space as depressed, looking at objects or noticing lack of light or seeing things that need to be done for maintenance of the space, and wishing that it was lighter, happier, more open and free feeling.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to realize how I create these judgments of my physical environment and I project myself onto my physical environment such that what surrounds me within this space is simply what is HERE, objectively, physically, but I apply meaning and definition to these objects and structures in ways that limit the physical objects as well as limit myself as moving through and around and within these objects/structures.


Vague things that I am putting into words right now... But I know that I exist in a space, and I often exist in this space in certain mind energetic states, such as depression, and I can see how I will blame the space in which I live for this energetic experience within myself. I will think back too on previous home environments with thoughts that "those were so much better," completely forgetting that I have carried my experience of depression with me everywhere I have gone, and that even when I lived in that bright apartment or that beautiful house, I still allowed myself to suffer the consequences of that which we call "depression." I know too that I can exist in this same space with absolutely no physical changes and experience different energetic states within myself. I also see that in releasing just some of what I have identified here, I am more able to look around this space and see objects and structures simply as they are without projecting my energetic experience onto them -- and within this, if there is some object out of place or some mess to clean up, it is easier to simply take care of that, putting things into physical order, rather than reacting to that mess or whatever and going into some weird helpless state where it's like crying over spilled milk. There's a mess and I don't like it. Clean it up. There's art I haven't worked on or completed, like haunting me -- so complete it! So it is not the space.

When and as I see myself wishing my environment was different or missing an old environment in nostalgia as if life was better when I lived there, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I am projecting what is inside of me, out onto my environment. I realize therefore that when I look around my environment and have certain reactions or beliefs or judgments come up, that all I am doing is seeing myself through a reflection. So I commit myself to look then directly at myself in this experience of judging my environment. I commit myself also to taking care of my environment and making it a space that I enjoy as an act of taking care of myself / taking responsibility for myself and who I am within my environment.

When and as I see myself within the belief/thought that "if only x were different, then I would be happy / life would be better," I stop and I breathe. I realize as I said above that no matter what changes outside of me, if I do not change myself from within, then all that I am will still be with me, and no amount of external change can change me - for real - internally. I commit myself thus to continue to face myself and see what I have accepted and allowed within myself, see what beliefs and judgments I carry around with me every day that distorts the way I live as life in reality, and to walk through these points in self forgiveness, committing myself therefore to self support as what is best for all.

Memories of Lived Environments - Day 59

I am on day 4 now of the final section of DIP Lite, wherein I am working with memories. What I notice already is that I continually have a hard time "coming up" with memories when prompted to write about one with a "positive/feeling attachment." I think that the reason for this is that so often, within my "positive/feeling attachment" memories, I also experience regret, where I "miss" the content of that memory and wish that I could still have the content of that memory here now. And this is sort of the point of working with these memories -- seeing how having a positive/feeling attachment to a memory limits me within experiencing my present as the here & now. But I tend to be so caught up in regret and missing and wishing that even "positive" memories for me are "negative" because I rarely think back on a memory and just smile and experience only positive feelings.

In large part this might be because regret is so strong within me that I tend to only think of positive/feeling attachment memories wherein I regret the decisions I have made to make those memories rather than realities, where I remember these memories and know that I have changed aspects of my physical environment (location, mainly) in such a way that I can never even try to replicate those memories even closely, because I am no longer in that place or with those people.

But this is all the more limiting because within this I sit idly by and watch these memories in my mind and feel hopeless/helpless that I cannot ever experience these things again, and then I resent myself for the decisions I have made to change my life in a way that the replication of these memories is impossible, and I resent the way that my life physically is now because it is not what it was. So here I am perceiving what my life is not rather than seeing what it is, and also I am limiting my ability to create new experiences for myself and experience new situations and also I am limiting myself in what I believe are the necessary "ingredients" (people, places) for the enjoyment of life, wherein I believe that I cannot enjoy life because I do not still live in Denver with my old friends.

And here too I have to "remember" that even if I did still live in Denver, many of my friends there have moved away, or the people in my apartment complex have moved to different living situations, or many of my old coworkers have moved on to different jobs.

So everyone and everything has changed and shifted, as this is what life does. And yet I imprison myself within my mind within my memories of this time where these memories have a positive/feeling attachment but even here I do not allow myself to "fondly remember" these times and to even really experience the positive/feeling attachment but instead go straight to regret and resentment of myself and my decisions and my current living situation, which is my home, my friends, my job, my community, the weather, etc.

So I notice that most of the time that I remember my life in Denver I remember it within regret and also resentment and a kind of powerlessness because I know I cannot turn back time. What is the solution here? I'm not sure. Initial response is to try to not think about Denver, but that's just suppression isn't it? So, release myself of the feeling/emotion attachments I have to my life in Denver, my past? Commit and apply myself to my present in the here & now? Stop allowing myself to come up with bullshit "buts" for why life here can't be however I want it to be, for why I am limited in my location in who I can be. Stop allowing myself to exist in my mind in my past. Stop allowing myself to wish I could turn back time.


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to wish I could turn back time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create and then foster and fester regret.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I am limited in my enjoyment of life because my life is not taking place in Denver, in the past.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to so often look back rather than looking at what is here now in front of me in the physical as the "ingredients" with which I can work.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to consider how to make my life "work" here and then done the work for that to happen. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I should be "magically happy" on the basis of my environment without having to do anything to make my environment supportive or to support myself within my environment. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place my source of contentment and satisfaction outside myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually get caught up in regret and "what if" and "but it's not the same."

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to neglect the here & now and to neglect myself within the here & now.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to neglect my lived environment such that I do not take care of household responsibilities so that I am always existing under the pressure of tasks which I have established within myself as undesirable to do and am always living in an environment which I have established within myself as unpreferable as compared to my memories of old living situations.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent a physical space as my living environment wherein I blame the physical space and not myself for my relationship with this space where I expect the space itself to be positive and productive and light and cheerful and free and open rather than directing myself to experience myself and my space this way, or freeing myself of these things altogether and simply being in the here & now without judgment but with responsibility for tasks and chores and obligations as well as self-expression and enjoyment.


When and as I see myself remembering my life in Denver in regret and helplessness and resentment, I stop and I breathe. I realize that my memories are not real: they are fictitious creations of my imagination based on experiences, feelings, emotions, images, interpretations, fears, and desires. I realize that even if my memories were completely real (accurate), they are not here & now, and so I realize that within my memories I am limiting myself in the here and now in the physical and I am creating a dissonance for myself, enslaving myself to and as my mind as my memories as what I cannot have, not looking at what I can have or what I can create or what is already here or who I am within all of this and how I have created all of this and how I continue to create myself and my experiences in every moment. I commit myself to investigating my memories and my relationship to and as regret, resentment, and wishful thinking. I commit myself to bringing myself back to and as my breath, in the physical, in the here & now, as one as equal as LIFE as what is best for all, directing myself through and as every moment within self-honesty and self-responsibility, as the creator & destroyer of myself through what I accept and allow.


When and as I see myself existing in my lived environment within passivity and resentment wherein I am seeing that "I do not like" aspects of my living space but that I don't do anything about that energetic experience / judgment, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I create my relationship with my environment and to a certain extent I create my environment, and here I am neglecting to do either in a self-supportive way. I commit myself to taking care of my environment and supporting myself through the creation of an enjoyable living space and through releasing myself of my negative associations and resentments with my living space such that this space is what I make it and I will make it into a self-supportive space for myself.

Here I notice that I doubt or question myself as who I am within this because I have this judgment in me that says I should be able to "be okay" no matter what my living space is like, I should be able to direct myself to "be okay" and also to take care of responsibilities no matter what (and therefore I shouldn't bother cleaning or organizing or trying to make my environment "enjoyable"). And what "responsibilities" here even really matter other than paying bills and other external logistical responsibilities? Who am I in "wanting" a "clean environment" or an environment which feels "open" or is decorated nicely and "looks nice"? Am I limiting myself further by trying to imagine how I would like my environment to look (I know that I often will envision/imagine a certain room arrangement, for example, or home feature, and then I will think "life will be so much better when" that arrangement is changed or when I live somewhere with that feature, where I am abdicating responsibility for myself in creating myself within the space I already presently have)? Am I establishing that I will not be "okay" until my environment looks a certain way? I know that I enjoy having a clean living space but I also know that I continually face the task of cleaning, organizing, and keeping things as such, as a challenge. So who am I in all of this? 


Possibly more on this as well as the commitments that I made to myself 6-8 months ago when I was looking forward to living by myself in this apartment, and also specifics of my current apartment as well as comparisons I have drawn from memories of my old job to new jobs I have had here.