Self-Judgment and Self-Support - Day 173

This post ended up being the opposite of specific, but that is okay... I did use my new little notebook today and that was very cool. It fits right in my pocket so it's perfect.

Mainly what I started writing within was the realization that I often lose sight of the "golden rule" in terms of treating others how I would like to be treated, and how this is sort of the most basic thing that must be understood and applied, and if this is really lived then not much else is all that relevant. But then I also realized how I utterly fail at treating myself the way I want to be treated... I mean if I can actually see how I would like to be treated, why don't I treat myself that way? Why do I take the absolute most self-abusive relationship with myself that I can possibly have? So that is what I was trying to write about when I began this post, but it became something much different, and that is okay, perhaps I will write more specifically on that point some other time. There is a lot in this post that could be written about more specifically at another time.

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I'm coming to see recently that when and as I experience joy or laughter or a smile on my face, it's, like... surprising, or unexpected, or novel, and also sometimes judged as something I should not experience. For one thing this indicates to me how little I have allowed myself to enjoy myself and enjoy life lately, to see that these instances are note-worthy because of their scarcity. For another it suggests to me that I must have some underlying permeating belief about myself and what I deserve, and apparently I do not deserve to experience happiness or joy or enjoyment. I am not sure the root of this belief.

I also know that throughout my life I have experienced depression and often once I enter a depressed state it has been very difficult to emerge back out of it, so that I kind of get stuck in negativity, pessimism, and depression, also helplessness, hopelessness, and beliefs about my own incapability. So knowing that I have been very stressed and anxious lately, and also in moderate to severe pain most days with migraines, I can see how this might come into play.

I also know that I continue to judge myself for a decision that I made, believing that this decision indicates I am a bad person or I am a failure and also believing that other people are judging me for this decision even though I don't really have any evidence to support that other people are even aware of the specifics of the decision.

So I enter into a lot of self-doubt that prevents me from even really embracing the decision and moving forward in my new creation of myself and my experience, instead still stuck in the past and also stuck in the point of this decision, also stuck in anger, and still stuck in whatever may or may not happen on one of my two days off where I might be forced to encounter a trigger that I have not yet figured out how to handle the reactions within myself that are triggered by this person. So even though I made the decision to "release myself" from myself from the energy that I created in this situation, I am still living under that dark cloud of not knowing what is going to happen, if I am going to be triggered, and thus have not been able yet to move on. But, apparently it is asking too much to ask this person to give me space. So I have to figure it out on my own.

"Figure it out on my own" -- another thing that I struggle with repetitively, where I isolate myself in thinking that I am just supposed to figure things out on my own, figure myself out by myself, without any guidance whatsoever. Some of this is a lack of trust of others. Much of the problem with it however is a lack of trust in myself. Also the isolation breeds paranoia. I can practice self-trust, though, by seeking out perspectives and support from others, and then making my own decisions for myself based on my self-honest investigation of what is best, so that still I am my own self directive principle, but I am not completely alone and I am not isolating myself from walking beside other beings and interacting intimately with others by sharing myself. And that is something I practiced somewhat today, with some success I would say, where I took an opportunity to share myself in a vulnerable way.


It is frustrating to me to see who I am today, because it is not the person I once was; or at least not the person I lived as. It is frustrating to me to see how much of who I am I can link to experiences I have had only recently and especially with a specific person whereby in our interactions I was led to believe certain things because I allowed myself to use that person as the example they represented themselves to be. It's frustrating that I allowed myself to lose myself to these experiences and interactions with others / another, because I had things I embraced as true and self-honest and they were effective, and I abandoned them when I saw they did not fit with a person I trusted or a person who I wanted to have like me. It is also frustrating to see how time and again I have felt hurt by people that I trusted to not hurt me, and yet at the same time I have in the past known that it is pretty much impossible to never hurt another person, mistakes happen, we're all selfish, we cannot read each others' minds. And so why did I expect to not get hurt? Why do I continually trust others to not hurt me, and so abdicate my responsibility to protect myself? And why then am I so lost on what it really means to protect myself in self-responsibility, and instead turn to defenses and walls and barriers as protection instead? Turning now to isolation. A part of me feels like this was like the last brick in the ultimate wall of keeping others out.

But I see already quite clearly that if that is true, I most certainly do not like this little isolation room I have created, and I see that I created it, as much as I would like to blame all these other play-actors in my world, so to deconstruct it now instead.


In trying to live in the here and now, I have lost sight somewhat of the "big picture" in terms of longevity of a learning process. I have zeroed in on only my current present experience of myself (rather than the current present reality of the here and now), so that I have forgotten basically that this is not all there is, that the whole point of process is to grow from this and expand my understanding and my stability and my ability to direct myself in every moment. A coworker reminded me today, for example, to consider 5 years from now and what I would like to have learned at this job. I had lost sight of that kind of perspective, of realizing the impermanence of my present circumstances, and so being able to see the "light at the end of the tunnel," so to speak, in terms of the things I am presently facing and experiencing.

So from that perspective I actually have more control and more self directive ability because I can choose the direction that I want to be in, say, 5 years, rather than feeling like all I have is right now and then tumbling around in all the chaos of the circumstances of my life right now. Looking forward toward the solution of the present "problems" rather than just sitting in the problems that are here.

Now I cannot depend and rely on the future. It is not here and now. But somehow recently I have lost sight of this bigger timeline picture, where getting any project completed is a process which requires steps and sometimes it is important to have an idea of what future steps one wants to take or accomplish. Realizing that all I have is the here and now is useful in terms of enjoying the present moment and also finding ways to be as effective as possible. But it is not effective for me to become mired in my present circumstances without consideration of what I want to learn or where I'd like to come out "in the end."

I mean I've said before that I am the constant in all of my experiences, and so learning to support myself comes first in terms of what to face first. If my internal experience of myself is negative and detrimental to my ability to live effectively then this is going to be true across environments. So I have to look at myself first, at softening with myself and not being so hard on myself all the time. I have to look at how I can actually practically apply self support in a way that works.

And I have to really make this process mine, if I am going to walk it. I really have to reject and disregard all of my projections of judgment from others or what others want from me or how others think I should be directing myself.


Okay.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is "bad" for me to believe in myself, have confidence in myself, see that I have done a good job, see that I have done something well, see that I am smart, see that I am capable, see that I possess other positive qualities which support me in navigating this world effectively as I utilize these qualities as my tools and assets for getting shit done and living effectively and enjoying life.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see and appreciate my own strengths.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see myself in a "positive" light because I have identified "positive" as one side of a polarity and I have identified polarities as "bad" rather than seeing, realizing, and understanding that what matters most is effective living as what is best for all, and my strengths can be utilized in a way to express through my living choices and applications that are best for all.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see getting support or validation from others as "bad" and as such taking this tool away from myself because I have seen it as mostly ineffective, but I have not yet replaced the tool by building enough trust and stability in myself for me to support and validate myself, so as a result I am left with nothing and no reason to believe that I am valid or worth anything because I am not allowing myself to hear this from others and I am not allowing myself to tell it to myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to only ever interact with myself in a negative way so that the most negative and abusive relationship I have is the one that I have with myself.

My mom recently tried to encourage me by saying that she admires how I lean into the painful aspects of my life (I don't really see it that way?) and that one day all of my hard work would pay off in a healthy relationship that I deserve.

But all that I really want is a healthy relationship with myself. How do I achieve that?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live each moment not in the "here and now" of whatever I am facing so that I am thinking about other stressful things in my life that I am not presently having to face in that moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live each moment to the exclusion however of other future moments in terms of progression through process and learning and expanding myself so that I can support myself in directing / guiding myself in a way that will result in success and effectively utilizing present challenges in a way that will support me to learn and grow by looking toward the future in terms of what I would like to learn and what I would like for my life to be like and thus how to effectively get there, also giving me the opportunity to realize that my life will not always be the way it is right now and so it will not always be so stressful and so I do not really actually have to be in "triage mode" where I am just trying to "survive," but I can actually stop, take some deep breaths, and then look at what it is here and now as an opportunity and challenge to learn and grow and change so that whatever I face "tomorrow" I will be prepared for rather than getting stuck here treading water.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to consider others in terms of my projections of how others might be judging me in relation to my process and how I am walking process and what decisions I have made. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to doubt my decision because I fear that it was the "wrong" decision because I do not give myself the gift of believing that I can trust myself and my own decisions. I realize that there really is no "wrong" or "right" decision, there is simply what is, and this is what is now, so to move forward within the circumstances I have created for myself in whatever way is most self supportive, which is most certainly not to continue to judge and doubt myself and also continue to think of myself and my process in relation to others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I have to do this whole process on my own because I have beliefs about what I should be capable of and also beliefs about how other people do not want to see me or talk to me or do not want me around / feel burdened by me, so within this I isolate myself and try to carry everything on my own even though I am not stable and even though there is much that I do not understand and even though conversation with others can be extremely supportive in gaining new perspectives from others or in seeing self through conversation.



Okay... That's enough for now.

I commit myself to continue to watch my self-talk and see how I can actually support myself and believe in myself and trust myself, none of which I can do if I am constantly tearing myself down and apart.

I commit myself to continue to focus on the present moment as the here and now in terms of where my mental energy needs to go, but to also now integrate the "big picture" timeline so that I can realize more of a "long-term plan" kind of support for myself to realize that this will not all happen overnight and I have to take steps and it will change, but it will take time.

I commit myself to find ways to enjoy and appreciate myself each day.

(I mean even in yoga for example, when so often teachers end class with saying "thank yourself for showing up on your mat today," I always dismiss this as irrelevant, as not useful, as not something I need to do, not something I deserve, like whatever, I'm here, but it's only because I would judge/hate myself if I didn't come... hmm...)

Practical Support Idea for Stressful Environments - Day 172

I've realized that one way I am actually sabotaging myself is by not looking at specific points and investigating just that point to find a solution. I get stuck on the "big picture" which is sometimes effective, but in this case it's actually more like trying to look at multiple different pictures at once (work, family, friendships, self: physically and mentally), which is pretty much impossible and leaves me feeling overwhelmed and wanting to give up. So here I just started writing about some of the internal experiences I have at work, trying to focus in on just one of the things that I feel like is out of control. I ended up realizing that my day is so chaotic structurally at work, and then it doesn't take much for my internal experience to seem chaotic, and so obviously I need some way to organize myself. So I realized that although I have already intended to purchase a small notebook to carry around and write in for work-related reasons, I can also use this as a tool to record my internal experiences as a way of seeing myself more objectively on paper and also of assisting and supporting myself to be able to process whatever reactions come up in me throughout the day, since there is not much time to process during the work day but if I can jot down a few things then I might have an easier time seeing the points and then writing self support on them later, or just seeing myself in the moment and like keep myself accountable in a way to not let myself drift off into some cyclical reaction because I will be able to become more aware of my internal experiences and whether or not I am directing them or if I am just having to move on to the next task while ignoring my own needs (to the degree that I end up wanting another to drop everything and meet my needs for me).

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I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want other people to do something about my internal energetic experiences because I feel like I cannot do anything about them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use my age or my gender as a reason to call myself a victim when I am having interactions with men who are older than I am who seem to be peeved with me because they dislike the changes that my position represents.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make these stressful situations about me through my energetic reactions wherein I feel hurt and need someone to come coddle and comfort me and reassure me that I am not a bad person and that I am doing a good job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want someone else to make me feel good about myself or make me feel like I am good enough.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand that I am here to do a specific job and that there might be people who do not like the job I have been asked to do, but within this they are actually not doing the job they have been asked to do, because in fact we have all been asked to do the same job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make the stress and friction that other individuals are experiencing within themselves in relation to the changes in their job descriptions, energies which are manifesting in their behavior and attitudes, about me, like as if I am somehow the victim or to blame for them reacting the way they are reacting, and as if me going away would somehow make their reactions go away.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to perceive myself as the center of this drama and conflict like as if it is all about me and it is just that these people hate me and are just about to explode on me at any moment and tell me what they really think of me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become paranoid that other people perceive me as a representative of the things that they do not like about their jobs.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become paranoid that other people blame me for the way that they experience their jobs.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to imagine other people blowing up on me and giving me a "piece of their mind" in terms of what they really think of me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take it personally that these people will walk by me and not smile or say hello or anything, that for the most part they avoid any interactions with me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take this personally and then judge myself through my interpretation of their behavior wherein I perceive that they blame me and target me as the reason that they don't like their jobs or as a person who is making their jobs not fun for them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to internalize and personalize the way that others have assumed that I am basically snitching on them and their behavior at work even though this is not what I am doing but because I learned that they originally thought I was the one who was doing this, I have held onto this within an assumption that they do not like me.

I realize that a few weeks ago I did not feel this much anxiety about these people and about my job performance because a few weeks ago I felt more confident in myself and my job performance and I also at that point had only just then learned that these people did not like me and so I had not yet destabilized myself within paranoia and instead was able to respond in saying that I do not dislike them but simply I am here to do a specific job and I think that each person should do the job they are asked and expected and paid to do.

So I see that somewhere along the way I began to internalize and personalize the reactions that other people were apparently having about me and as a result my behavior has changed and I have stopped saying hello as much and I have avoided conversations with these people because I have believed that they do not like me and I have victimized myself within this belief like as if they should like me but they don't so they're "mean" and also within a fear of conflict where I do not want to get into an argument with these people.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be directed by my fears of conflict and my fears of argumentative conversations especially with men.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear things happening at work that would not be at all appropriate if they did happen and I realize I would actually be protected by law if anything inappropriate like that did happen such as discrimination on the basis of my gender or age.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to shy away from interactions and also my job duties as a professional adult because I fear that other people do not like me and I imagine in my mind saying disrespectful things about me because of my gender, my age, and my philosophy / approach in my job performance.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel uncomfortable in my own skin at work because I feel like people are always judging me, whether we agree or disagree on the approach that we take in our job performances.

I forgiven myself for accepting and allowing myself to always think that people are talking badly about me behind my back.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself therefore to feel wounded and small and like I need someone to pick me up and make me better and give me confidence and affirm to me that I am doing a good job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to trust the interpretations and paranoia of my mind more than I trust the real actual interactions I have with my coworkers, many of which show that they appreciate what I do and enjoy me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore physical evidence that I am okay in favor of embracing conjecture within my mind that I am a horrible person.


When and as I see myself feeling paranoid, anxious, like a victim, or stressed at work, I stop and I breathe. When and as I see myself projecting my own internalizations and personalizations onto others in belief of how they feel about me or what they think of me, I stop, and I breathe. I realize that I am there to do a job and I am doing that job and I have received a lot of positive praise for the job I have done. I realize that if I do anything wrong, someone will probably let me know. I realize that people may or may not like me, it doesn't really matter because as long as I can stabilize myself and act from a starting point of self honesty, then anything another person does not like about me is either their own energetic reaction, or something that I can resolve and face in myself if it is brought to my attention. I realize that I am my own responsibility and although sometimes when I feel stressed it is okay to seek out support, it is not really okay or appropriate or self responsible for me to expect others to give me positive feedback or even just positive interactions like as if keeping me afloat is a priority in such a stressful environment. Each individual is his or her own first priority and if I am not supporting myself to be stable and self-confident in myself, then I am not going to be able to be effective in my job. I realize that when I am doubting myself at work, I am not present at work and I am not able to be effective in my job.

So I commit myself to really focus on my breath and being in the here and now at work, facing whatever is in front of me and taking care of whatever tasks are asked of me.

I have committed myself to this job and so I commit myself to this job, meaning that here this is the job I have for the next however many months, and so I need to find a way to make it work for me.

I commit myself also to carrying around a small notebook with me so that I can take notes on work-related ideas, log incidents, and also support myself through writing as a physical expression of the many thoughts and feeling I face throughout the day but am never able to express or direct because it is always onto the next thing and showing up and basically performing my job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to put myself in a position of performance, of acting, of pretending, because I have not properly supported myself with my breath, with presence in the physical, or with the ability to process while I am at work, so that instead I will be caught up in my mind and my internal experiences while at the same time trying to perform a stressful and demanding job that involves a lot of social interaction.

So I commit myself to carrying around a small notebook for the above reasons and I commit myself to support myself through writing, breathing, and being in the physical moment, within this applying self-support to create self-stability to foster self-trust at work.

I commit myself to utilize this notebook as a way of seeing myself and understanding my experience throughout the day at work, because work is chaotic enough without my internal experiences, and when I add in my internal energies and beliefs and judgments it becomes extremely convoluted and difficult to manage. I realize there are better ways therefore to support myself at work and so I commit myself to trying this notebook idea, alongside a focus on my breath and a focus on the physical as whatever I must do to direct each moment effectively as what is best for all -- which thus does not mean giving priority to my energetic creations as most important.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get caught up in being self-ish in my direction of myself so that my self and my internal experiences of myself are what are most important to me so that I begin to feel like panicked in terms of having certain needs met and I feel helpless in meeting those needs myself and so I push those needs out onto others and then allow myself to further create whatever internal experience I have of myself based on my perception / interpretation of what others think of me because even those that I want to support and "save" me sometimes are busy and so I take it personally that they are not available to support me or I become so victimized and anxious that I want them to like read my mind that I need some help but instead we just talk about something unrelated to my internal experience where I feel like I need help, because they can't read my mind and I have been too anxious to ask for direct support.

I realize I can in fact support myself, I just haven't allowed myself to, and I haven't allowed myself to come up with solutions for myself to make my work day easier and less stressful, to direct the stress that I face.

I realize that having a notebook will assist and support me both in keeping track of work-related issues as well as keeping track of my internal experiences.

I realize that I need to realize myself as my constant and thus the only thing that can make me stable because anything else that I believe can make me stable is not always with me, only I am with me everywhere I go, I am my constant, and so I can rely on myself to keep myself stable, if only I give myself the tools to support myself and then build trust in myself that I am in fact capable of supporting myself and keeping myself stable.

Age is Just a Number and Life is Invaluable - Day 166

I want to revisit the point of anxiety at work from a perspective that is easily generalized to all of my living.

My previous full time jobs have been in environments where there have been other people close to my age who had similar roles or titles and also have provided ample opportunity for casually getting to know and befriend one another even while at work, which easily eventually developed into friendships outside of work.

At my old job that was most similar to my current job, there were at least about 50 people with my same job title, of varying ages and levels of education and experience. Many of them were younger, like in their 20s or early 30s.

So the point / perspective I want to look at is age as well as education / work experience and how within this current job I have limited myself in my social acceptance of myself because I am one of two individuals in our 20s and I am one of two individuals who only have BA degrees, among a staff of about 20.

I have known throughout my experiences of anxiety that one point / belief within myself was that "I am young" and "I am inexperienced" and within this I placed myself in a position of inferiority. But amid all of the anxiety and much other unrelated stress, I have had some difficulty gaining stability in myself over the last few weeks, and so I did not question or investigate these beliefs but merely allowed them to direct me and feed my anxiety.

When the point finally turned for me was the other day in a yoga class when the girl sitting next to me, who is about 5 years younger than me, but is a yoga teacher and is incredibly mature and has served as a wonderful example of forgiveness and self-responsibility for me, made a comment toward / about the yoga teacher instructing that class, who is probably in her late 30s. She said something like, "you're such a sweet pea."

And this struck me as strange because of the age discrepancy.

But then quickly I realized how basically "age is just a number" and here are two individuals existing as equals in respect of one another as human beings with equal value as life, so that the year that one individual was born does not determine or dictate who or how that person should be or behave.

So witnessing this very small exchange brought this point back to me while I was in a more stable existence within myself so that I could relate the point back to myself and especially my work relationships, so that I was able to see that my beliefs about myself as inferior because of my age or my experiences, and my belief that other see me as inferior, is all self-created and thus manifested by me in the physical through my behavior and especially through my anxiety.


I have also struggled at work with "boundaries" in terms of delineating between seeking support for work-related stress versus personal stress, since I have had plenty of both recently (and since I work with therapists so in a very vulnerable state it would be quite easy to just spill!). In the moments of highest emotional turmoil and anxiety it was hard to tell the line. But in reflecting on this age point and also my old jobs where I was able to forge friendships even with the people who were significantly older than me (in fact for most of my life my closest friends have been 3+ years older than me) and also some of the people with graduate degrees, I was able to see even more how I was limiting myself through my self-beliefs about my "position" basically as determined / dictated by the year I was born in relation to the year that others were born.

And so yesterday I hit a point of frustration and stress while at work to such a degree that I ended up crying in front of two of my coworkers, and they were very cool and supportive in helping me talk out what was going on for me, acknowledging my experiences, and also helping me to find solutions for the stressors I was facing. Also yesterday I was able to receive support regarding stress in my personal life, so basically yesterday was a cool day of support! Then today at work I was able to show up more stable and able to direct myself without anxiety about what other people think, also directing myself to seek out relations with the people I most enjoy and admire at work only to find myself welcomed and my presence embraced.

So although I think it was like a "necessary" part of my process to go through this phase of anxiety wherein I kind of pulled away from some of my coworkers, it was cool to come full circle in a way and come back to those relationships / sources of support without the lenses of anxiety and paranoia.

I am learning a ton at my job about so many things, which is really cool. I mean although it is extremely stressful (and it's not because of the students!), it is like a fire to purify myself in... while getting paid!

Anyway:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to somehow get caught up in age as more than a number.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define and e-value-ate myself based on my age in comparison to the age of the people around me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think of myself as inferior and also believe that I cannot or should not or am not supposed to (like some secret rule about which I have not been informed) forge and form work relationships beyond what is absolutely necessary with the people that I admire because they are older than me and have more education than me and more letters after their names and they probably want nothing to do with me and probably get annoyed when I hang around.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt myself in the shadow of people who have bigger numbers and more letters.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore or forget or disregard or discredit any indication that the people I admire enjoy or admire / respect me in return, and then cling to any minor thing that I can interpret as being possibly indicative of confirmation of my fears and anxieties.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to put myself in a position of anxiety and self doubt and inferiority which is undoubtedly manifested in my behavior so that the other people around me probably or might sense that I am sensitive to criticism and so within this I become less trusting of the validity of what they say to me, doubting if it is true or genuine, believing that they are just trying to make me feel better.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself therefore to manifest these consequences of anxiety and beliefs about my own inferiority wherein I self-sabotage through living this out.

I realize that no person is ever going to bow down to me and tell me I am amazing in such a way that will ever appease my anxiety or self doubt -- and, even if they did, I would probably find some way to discredit and disregard this within my mind, seeing it as "not enough" evidence because I am the one who believes myself to be "not enough."

I realize I am the only person who can stop my anxiety and self doubt, because I am the only person who created it.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand how age is just a number and we are all one and equal as life.

I commit myself to this realization in my living as what is best for all (and best for me!).

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my self expression and my LIVING through self doubt and self judgment and beliefs about my own inferiority.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my self expression and my LIVING through these things in such a way that I believe that other people want to suppress me and do not want me to go above a certain level of self expression and living, like as if everybody knows something I don't know and I need to just keep a low profile or else something bad is going to happen or people won't like me or I don't even really know what this fear is, just that it's a sense or an energy by which I have suppressed myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit and suppress my self expression and living as life as one with and equal to all as life.


When and as I see myself entering into or participating within and as an anxiety about myself as an inferiority point in relation to others as a comparison point about age or education, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I am life and so I am one with and equal to all as life as the value of life. I commit myself to realizing myself as one with and equal to all as life as the value of life -- invaluable.

Myriad Points - Day 156

I feel like I have a lot going on for me right now, and I have resistance to writing about it in part because I don't even know where to start.

It's actually similar to how I felt at this week's CoDA meeting, where I thought about sharing, but then didn't really know what I would possibly say. And my experience with that is one of the many things I could dissect and share here.

So for now I just want to make a list of some of the main points I have tumbling around and within me right now, and see what comes of that, or just see it.

1. Anxiety / Paranoia
• I continue to experience a lot of anxiety, especially at work, although I don't really engage in much outside of work to trigger an experience of anxiety. The anxiety itself is within my mind of course, and that goes with me everywhere. 
• After I wrote about anxiety last Tuesday, I experienced a reprieve and a restabilization. Even yesterday morning I noticed a marked difference in my experience of myself, my confidence, my presence here in the physical. But then at lunch time I had an interaction and I interpreted a facial expression in such a way that triggered back chat about that person not liking me and being annoyed that I was trying to participate in the conversation. 
• And then I put words in that person's mouth, really hateful words that I believe are directed at me, like, "Oh, you wanted to talk? Oh my god, why are you talking? Why are you even here? Just leave. I can't wait to get away from you."
• So first I reacted to a facial expression and doubted myself for participating in the conversation. I wondered, did I interrupt? Did I do something inappropriate or rude? Should I not have shared? I should just shut up and listen. 
• (So when in my life have I met or perceived a reaction from another like this? Where did this belief originate?)
• The interesting thing here is that for example all my life people have thought that I have been sad or mad because of my facial expressions, when I have been neither (at least not when they have commented about it). So I of all people should realize that facial expressions do not always communicate clearly a person's experience. 
• I should also realize that a person's experience is their experience and says more about them than it does about me. 
• So I should realize that my experience tells me about me, not about what other people actually think about me. 
• Then after I shared what I put into that conversation, pretty much everyone left (it was "time to go" for some, but for others they could have easily stayed, but also today I noticed times when it seemed like people might have changed their conversation when I walked into the room, or purposely walked a different direction so as to avoid me), some of them retreating to offices behind closed doors together, and me back to work. The difficult thing at work is that the people I most trust and admire and respect, and also therefore want to have like me, have different roles than I do on campus. So while I am expected to be in classrooms with students the majority of the day, they are expected to be in their offices having conversations about how to implement changes on campus. 
• So I know the expectation of their roles, and with my interactions with these people, I know that they are just as passionate as I am, if not moreso, about actually implementing these changes. So, chances are, it is safe to assume, that when they have the opportunity to be behind closed doors, they are not talking about me and how much they hate me and how they can get rid of me, but probably about how they can implement these changes.
• Now, a tricky part of this is that there ARE people on campus that these people do talk about in ways that I would not like to be talked about for professional reasons, because basically these people they talk about are people who are not in alignment with the changes we are trying to implement, and so are not really doing their jobs well as they have been directed to do them. So obviously I do not want to be perceived this way, although I have absolutely zero reason to believe that I am perceived this way except the bullshit that I make up in my paranoid mind. 
• So on the one hand, if these people are going to be talking about anybody behind closed doors, I can probably take some very good guesses as to about whom, and even as to what specifically they are saying. 
• But on the other hand, I witness and even participate in these conversations, as they are necessary to navigate the politics of implementing these changes, and so I thus have a fear about these same conversations happening about me.
• But, what I also know of these people, the one in particular who I feel the most anxiety around, is that this person is completely transparent with those about whom they speak. Meaning, they may have discussions behind closed doors with others about someone, but then they will have that same discussion with that someone -- showing them the respect of entrusting them to be professional enough to handle such topics as how to implement these changes even though those individuals do not want to. 
• I want to implement the changes. I have received many compliments from these people. So why do I continue to doubt myself, personally and professionally? 
• I admire / respect these individuals, so I want them to like me / I want them to continue to provide me with guidance / support / exemplary professionalism / strategies for doing this job. 
• I am invested in actually enjoying my day at work, and these people are pretty much the primary source of enjoyment (outside myself! so placing my ability to enjoy work outside myself is problematic because it is not stable / not something I can control). 
• So, I mean, if I didn't really care about enjoying what I spend the majority of my day doing, or if I didn't have to go there every day, then I wouldn't be so invested in wanting these people to like me. 
• But I have to look at why I care so much about people liking me. 
• One thing that is relevant to all of this is that I frequently feel anxiety about my self-worth in the eyes of others and whether or not other people like me. And one of the few things that I have found thus far to even bring me anywhere close back to "center" in terms of not going to these extreme states of paranoia is the act of comparison. I doubt how really self-supportive or self-honest that is... but it's what I've got, right now. And so if / when / as I feel anxiety / paranoia that members of my family, for example, do not like me, I can refer to other members of my family who I know behave "worse" than I do and are more of a "problem" than I am (because within this anxiety / paranoia I perceive myself as "bad" and a "problem) and see that my family members still love and support that person. Similarly at work if / when / as I feel anxiety / paranoia that coworkers do not like me, I can refer to other coworkers who I see are great sources of frustration and set-backs to the changes we are there to implement, and realize that they are still treated with respect as human beings, and even if there are some personal misgivings in place, it's not like anyone hates anyone and hates when they walk into the room and hates when they open their mouth, etc. etc. And so from the point of "comparison" I can at least get somewhat of a more grounded perspective on myself by comparing behavior and effect of behavior between myself and some of these other people to begin to see that there really isn't much that I do that other people are likely to react to negatively. Or I can take for example my job at my yoga studio, where I am repeatedly complimented by a staff member that I am good at my job there, and am sometimes let in on whatever is going badly for others there, and yet when tonight I called the studio to ask a question about the price of an event (something ideally I would know given my position at the front desk), I became paranoid that the staff member I spoke with (the same staff I mentioned already) was annoyed with me. So I can refer back to the relationship already established to see how this person actually feels about me. 
• But... that's sort of all I have at this point to try and get myself out of this paranoia. That, and trying to actually recognize and value what positive feedback I receive from other people, something I have never been great at retaining and usually brush off as invalid, a fluke, or them somehow being wrong. 
• And yet, how a person "feels" about me is mostly meaningless, because often it has only to do with that person. I mean peoples' moods change all the time based on the smallest things and so I guess I can try to go off of how a person seems to feel about me when they are at their "baseline" / not stressed out or upset or especially elated about something, but even so this is really only a reflection of my possible ability to manipulate others into liking me. Although I don't see myself as actively manipulating others into liking me, having others like me is still a primary starting point for my behavior and so it undoubtedly plays a role in directing who I am. So again: Why do I care so much about other people liking me? 
• So I see still that none of this is actual stability in self honesty in myself. So that is still a huge point I have to work on. 
• I suppose I also have the realization that my internal conversations and reactions are likely directing my behavior in ways that I may not be totally aware of, and that then serve as stimuli for others to react in ways that I perceive as others not liking me, when in fact those others might be perceiving that I do not like them. 
• So: Be nice! Treat others as I would like to be treated! Be respectful! 
• And, maybe ask for feedback. Like, ask if there is anything I can do better or differently, professionally-speaking, so that if there is anything, I can know, rather than fear that there is something that they are not telling me. 
2. Work in general is very stressful for many reasons
• I realize that in some ways I "like" stress because it is interesting and also makes me feel important. 
• However something I realized over the weekend was that here I am back at a job that is stressful every day by its very nature, just like the last time I worked at a school, but this time is different because we are trying to implement an entire systemic shift in program, and there really isn't much stability or even foundational support in terms of what to show up and do each day. Fortunately this is being built each day, but it's an extremely slow process.  
• It is primarily other staff who contribute most to the stress, not the students. 
• More and more I am dreading going to work, or, rather, less and less am I looking forward to it. More and more I feel like I am just trying to "get through the week," because the stress and anxiety I feel at work is so debilitating. The job itself really isn't that hard. It's my relationship to the job, my relationship with myself that is so demanding of all my energy, where I demand all this energy of myself through my reactions, sucking me dry with paranoia, stress, and anxiety. 
• Only to then meet the weekend where I have another obligation, and fear / anxiety now tied to that obligation as well. 
• I see that I often miss my old job in Denver because I had so much more support from my coworkers even if only because there were so many other people with my same exact job title and description who shared similar experiences, plus I worked with other staff at almost every moment of the day whereas now it is often just myself and a teacher in the room with students, and whenever I am on campus (getting paid to be there, anyway), so are students, and there is no one else my age / with my job title who I feel I can trust / rely on for support. Support is really lacking in general, and although there are individuals who try to give it to me, I begin to feel guilty or like I am sucking them dry or overstepping boundaries and being needy by needing / wanting support. Plus it is clear that every single individual on campus is in a state of distress and frustration. So we are all trying to each manage ourselves while managing each other while managing the students while managing the changes. 
3. Loneliness
• The last point in the previous section also leads me thus to think about how I feel lonely. I mean at my old job for example I made friendships where we hung out outside of work frequently, we even celebrated Thanksgiving together. Also in Denver I had other friendships in my building. And some wacky stuff happens at work and it would be cool to just be able to talk about it with someone, to just process it through conversation. I have written a lot about friendships and there is much more still to write, but they are something I have always struggled with my whole life. And as much as I miss a handful of people from Denver and various aspects of my life there, if you would have asked me while I still lived in Denver if I felt like I had any really good friends, I would have said no most of the time, because I have always discredited and discounted whatever friendships I have made, always on guard for getting hurt or being betrayed, wanting to reject others before they could reject me. I think that the last time that I really consistently embraced my friendships was my freshman year of college. After that I much more consistently came up with barriers. 
• And that is something that came up at the CoDA meeting from someone else's share, about drawing others close and then pushing them away. There is this fear in me of actually having close, honest, intimate relationships, even though at the same time I have often said that that is precisely all I have ever really wanted in life. Intimacy with others. 
• So that is interesting to look at in terms of intimacy with myself, and if I've really had that, at least in a way that has provided me with self support and feeling complete and whole within and as myself. Although I've always been extremely introspective, I've not had compassion and grace for myself, I've not really been my own best friend, or even friend. In fact I am often my own worst enemy, as we can see from the paranoia I experience. 
• So I put up these walls and defenses and barriers. Obviously. Part of that comes back to the paranoia where in many instances I might perceive that another person doesn't like me, or just generally go through life with the belief that I am unlikeable, and so I put up walls and defenses to prevent myself from getting hurt or from having to be rejected by others. I also utilize memories of times when I have felt hurt and rejected and betrayed by people I decided to trust, and use those memories as justification for more walls and barriers and not trusting others. 
• But I obviously cannot trust myself! And I am the only one I really even should trust. So that is the point to look at. Trusting myself, and being my own friend. If I do this, then I am stable, and I can interact with others freely, without expectation, hope, or fear. 
• It also frustrates me a great deal that some of the few friends I have had recently, who have been males, have hit on me and sexualized me rather than simply being my friend. And yet I settle for this as if it is at least safe and secure inasmuch as I know they want me, even if it is only that they want me for sex, so I feel safe that they will not leave me. I don't try to tease or anything... I mean I have been actually upfront that I am uncomfortable with the comments. But I use this also as like a self-victimization point of "I can't even manage to make a friend who just wants to be my friend!" like as if all I am good for is my body and sexuality, which is actually often how I have accepted and allowed men to treat me and thus how I have treated myself, because "I accept sex when what I really want is love." 
4. At this week's CoDA meeting there was a lot of silence between shares. And I felt awkward around it. And I would glance around the room sometimes and lock eyes with people, people who were looking right at me. And I began to panic and get paranoid in my mind that people were expecting me to share, and in fact getting mad that I wasn't sharing, and feeling like I was somehow infiltrating their group and just taking without giving, just listening to all of these peoples' inner secrets without sharing any of my own. And I created big anxiety and pressure around this that made me start to think that I will just not go next week, that I can't handle it, and also getting kind of angry that these people would be so untrusting of me and expect me to share even when I don't want to. All this just from making eye contact. 
• So I mean first of all obviously there is this huge point of anxiety and paranoia and projection and back chat, and believing that I know what others are thinking about me, and believing that others are thinking these very negative things about me, just like the anxiety and paranoia at work. 
• Then there is the actual fear of sharing, the fear of opening up. The fear even of my reaction to sharing, the fear that it will be yet another experience where I will say something and then immediately doubt myself and therefore hate myself and beat myself up within my mind. The fear that I will fumble over my words, or that I won't have anything interesting to say. The fear of breaking the ice, the fear of taking that first initial step.
• Breaking the ice and taking that first initial step is the fear I have to conquer first, and I could easily do so by simply saying, "My name is Kaitlee, I'm a codependent. I notice that I feel very afraid of sharing in this group, not because the group has shown me that it is untrustworthy, but because I see that I do not trust myself and the things that I tell myself about myself. But I am not going to allow my fear to direct me, so here I am, sharing about my fear. Thank you." And then they would thank me for sharing, and I would maybe cry or at least tear up and then suppress it down, and then the next person would share. 
• And if I were to react with crying I would be afraid of how others would perceive this, like as if I want attention or as if I want the focus to stay on me even after I am done sharing, or even that others would pity me or feel bad for me, or their focus would in fact remain on me, because I do not want to be seen or recognized even though I so badly want to be seen and recognized. 
• What the fuck. 
• But one cool thing about this is to also see how I resisted writing yesterday, and even still today, because I didn't really know what I could share. So rather than support myself by trying to write for myself, like I am doing here by just getting it all out, I would start to write, then scratch it because it didn't seem worthy of sharing. But what is worthy of sharing? I am here. I am walking. I am doing my fucking best within my present abilities to support myself. That is worth sharing. 
5. Which leads me to: A different kind of anxiety
• Not the same kind of anxiety that exists alongside paranoia, although maybe this also involves its own form of paranoia. This is an anxiety about a build up. This is an anxiety about breaking the ice. This is an anxiety about that first time. That first time I share. That first time I see my dad again after over 7 years. That first time I see and talk to that person between myself and whom I have built a wall and a grudge. 
• So my immediate response once I began to crack under the pressure of this growing anxiety is to release it, but I am not certain if I am releasing or suppressing / ignoring it. I don't like it, that's for sure. I don't want to experience it. I believe that if I can "let it go" and stop allowing myself to exist as it, that then I will be able to do whatever is necessary to heal and / or practically prepare, whether energetically, mentally, or physically. 
• How valid is this? I don't know. Do I want to share even after trying to let that go? Not really. Do I really want to see my dad, even after ignoring the pressure I have felt to see him someday? Not really. Do I want to reconnect with the other side of the grudge? Not really. Is this just accepting and allowing the blockade to exist, the wall, the grudge, or the otherwise off-limits-ness of fear? 
• I mean, is it supportive to exist under and as all that pressure and anxiety to go through with something? I have felt it during this time of requesting time and space. I have not been HERE and NOW but have been THERE and THEN, that future time and space when I believe I might have to face this fear. So rather than being HERE and NOW and WITHIN and AS MYSELF, during the time and space I have been given per my request, I have been abandoning myself to my energetic experience of fear, anxiety, and pressure, imagining and gearing up and building up to that future time and space of having to face the fear. Rather than taking the time to heal and do whatever it is that I need to do to be ready to face that fear, I have been the fear itself, the fear directing me, also giving me migraines. 
• So... I have to look at this more. I don't really know what's going on there. It's hard to tell. If I were not me, if I were someone else reading this, I would probably say: Face the fear! Fuck time and space! Just do it! 
• But, do I trust myself to just do it, and not react? To just do it, and not be overtaken again by energy, even more than I already am? 
• But, but, but... 
• But I see in what I have written in all of these points above, I am so obviously not stable. I am so obviously allowing myself to be directed by energy. And this is not even all of the points tumbling around and in me. So what is most self supportive? Is it better to put off the scariest points in favor of trying to stabilize the others? Would it be easier to stabilize the others if I got the scariest points out of the way first? What am I so afraid of, anyway? I'll not die. The world won't end. 
• And I see from Day 155: "I realize that I learn through falling, and I learn through standing back up. This is how I learn to trust myself, and by trusting myself I will be able to stop my fears."
6. Family stress
• I have multiple stressors around me in my family, primarily in the form of illnesses and old age. No one close to me has ever died. The few people who have died, I wasn't that close to, and certainly after they died I told myself we weren't really that close at all anyway. I mean in part this is relevant to my inability to connect with other people on an intimate level of really feeling connected in such a way that I can't just basically flip a switch and suppress any negative reactions I might have over their death (and yet look what happens if someone betrays me or hurts me in some way, how interesting). 
• I think one of the things I experience here is guilt. Guilt about not being there more. Which is interesting because I could easily be there every day. I just choose not to. I "intend" to, moreso now than ever. But do I follow through? I haven't yet. 
• And then there are family members I resist for other reasons. And then there are family members I perceive as resisting me. And then there is me, feeling resentment about that perceived resistance. And then there is me, undoubtedly operating and behaving in some way that manifests precisely that which I fear, if in no other way then that I experience it as real because I create it through my own paranoia. 
7. How I respond when it seems others are resisting me
• If I reach out to someone and they do not respond, I tend to kind of grumble and have some back chat but then just kind of leave it, but really there is still this energy that they must not like me and I shouldn't bother and maybe they even hate me and maybe they are sick of hearing from me and I am such a burden etc. etc. 
• Usually when this happens it is over some kind of electronic communication, most frequently texting. 
• So, simply to look more at this and see how even if I leave the thoughts alone, I still hold onto the energy even if only subtly and still end up feeling resentment that another person somehow managed to overlook responding to me / communicating effectively and believing therefore they must be purposely ignoring me with malicious intent. 
• How have I lived this out? There have been instances when I have purposely not responded. Sometimes with malicious intent, sometime manipulative intent, and sometimes simply because I believe it is best for me to not engage. 
8. Migraines. Increased migraines. This is how I can really tell that something, or many things, I am doing is not working. 

So it's obvious that I've not been directing myself in myriad ways. It's obvious that I've lost touch with my ability to support myself practically, or even to trust myself. 

Where to go from here is unclear. Continue to support myself in the ways that I know how. This includes continuing to benefit from what my peers share in their blogs, or what is shared in interviews. This includes breathing through my entire day at work, whether or not I am experiencing anxiety, and being observant of what is going on around me, and stable in myself, and realizing that even if there are people on campus who don't like me, even if people I respect and admire do actively avoid me and talk behind my back, this does not hurt me physically, I am still here. So being here and now in every moment and every breath, and seeing myself too as who I am within my mind, who I am to myself, how I treat myself, what I say to myself, and not accepting or allowing myself to mistreat, abuse, or manipulate myself through my thoughts, back chat, and energy. 

And since I feel disconnected from myself in terms of the supports I have already established and the realizations I have already had, where to go from here also thus includes reconnecting with these aspects by rereading what I have already written on a lot of these topics, because none of these are brand new points within my process, or none of them are completely unrelated to points I have already begun the process of walking, so I can support myself by reminding myself what I have already begun to learn. 

Thanks for letting me share.

The Grudge - Day 105

"...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." - Betrayal - Day 104

I have to decide: is it more important for me to hold a grudge, or do what is best for all? Is it more important for me to hold a grudge, or forgive myself and forgive another? Is it more important for me to hold a grudge, or align myself within the principle of equality and oneness? Is it more important for me to hold a grudge, or take absolute unconditional responsibility for myself in brutal self honesty? 

It is not magic. 

A grudge will not just disappear. No one else will make it go away. No one else put it here. 

I have to do the work of releasing and rejecting it, just as I did the work of creating it. 

Really, whatever excuses or justifications or reasons I think I have for maintaining a grudge -- they're meaningless. They fit only into the context of competition, inferiority & superiority. They are my ego, and so to allow the grudge is to allow my ego. To allow the grudge is to hinder myself. To allow the grudge is to poison myself. 

I have a handful of grudges, some more prominent than others. So this will be a work of my entire self, and of these individual relationships. I have cut so many out of my life when it got too hard to continue to see myself in their reflection. So this will be a work of seeing myself resolutely. A work thus of seeing myself now, here, in every moment, and of reflecting too on my past and my memories and all that I have carried with me from grudges I have been suffocating under for months or years. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that something like a "grudge" will just dissipate or get better or somehow resolved over time. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that any amount of sympathy or understanding from another person will help to resolve the "grudge." 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am not the creator of my grudges, that whomever I am holding the grudge against is the person who brought these intense emotions and judgments upon me. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see how a grudge is created within my mind and how it manifests throughout my entire self, and how a grudge directs my living, thinking, and moving. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see myself when and as I am creating a grudge so that I can stop myself in that moment and reverse the process. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that grudges simply happen, they just are, and I have to maneuver myself throughout my life and the world between all these walls of grudges. Can't go that way -- there's a grudge over there!

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blockade myself within my mind and even my physical existence through the construction of grudges, where I wish to avoid certain people or places because I have attached such intense emotional reactions to those people or places. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe and live by the thought that it is okay to simply not see or speak to certain people ever again, to simply shut certain beings or places out of "my world," to manufacture a reality for myself that is exclusive of those against whom I hold a grudge, to thus divide up existence as I see fit for my own self interest. 

Ignorance is not bliss. This is undoubtedly one of my many sources for my creation of my continual experience of depression. To not face. To ignore. To pretend in resistance. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blockade the flow of relating to other people because I have created so many judgments and expectations within my mind where as far as I'm concerned, other people are not really allowed to be themselves, they have to match up with the image of them I have created. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to black list and red x people who do not live and express according to how I have wanted or expected or imagined them to live and express. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think and believe one thing, one positive direction, about a person, only to then reverse to the polar opposite of complete negativity about that person when/if something happens that I was not expecting or I do not like. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see myself as the subject of "I did not expect that" or "I do not like that," where here obviously I am the mover in this sentence, I am the one who was not expecting something, I am the one who did not like something, NOT the other person -- thus I am the one who is creating the "problem" through my reaction. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel intimidated by this process of dismantling grudges and walls. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to run away and not deal with it, to retreat back into the belief that the passage of time heals all wounds, to basically ignore my responsibility here as my own creator, and to want to just say/pretend that "next time" will be different, without having to deal with / face this time or all those times past. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give myself the space of believing that "this will be a long process" where within this thought I see that I am giving myself room to dilly dally and not really try because it's going to take so long, it's going to be so hard, so it's okay if it takes me a really long time.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to embrace my own power as the creator of myself and as my own self directive principle, the only person who can remove these grudges which I put there in the first place. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am more important, as my ego, than the work that must be done here, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to bastardize my self importance by not realizing that what is important for me is important for all, within the principle of equality and oneness as what is best for all. So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to this idea that I am important, what I want is important, what I think is important, what I feel / emote is important, not realizing that yes, "I" am important AS LIFE, as one with and equal to all life, but not these other things -- these other things are not me. 

So now I commit myself to watching and seeing myself as I move, to catch myself when and as I am developing a grudge.

I commit myself to watching and seeing myself as I think, to catch myself when and as I am participating in the sustenance or maintenance or growth of a grudge. 

I commit myself to actually writing out my grudges, to investigating where they are from, to releasing them, to SEEING them without judgment so as to really see myself in them, who am I here? What am I hiding from myself within these grudges? What do I not want to see, by not seeing this other person? Do I really think I am protecting myself within a grudge? What am I really protecting? 

I commit myself to the realization that the walls I see which I believe are containing me and blocking me in are me, they are my own creation, they are made of the same stuff as I am made of, and so I can move them, I can smash them down, and I can create within myself one nothingness which can exist in equality and oneness with all life. 

I commit myself to increasing my understanding of the difference between who I am, and who I am as my mind. I commit myself to breathing and being here with myself in my body. 

Most of all, most practically of all, I commit myself to actually writing it out, not to ignoring it. This is one of those commitments I have to push myself to follow through on. 

When and as I see myself resisting the work that is to be done on myself as my grudges, I stop and I breathe. I realize that this resistance is what will keep me in the grudge. I realize that any excuses or justifications I manage to rationalize this resistance are lies I am telling myself so as to avoid the work of seeing myself, which is also the function of the grudge. I realize I cannot change myself if I cannot see myself. I realize I am the only person who can do this work. So I commit myself to writing it out, little by little or a lot at a time, and I commit myself to doing it until it is done, no matter how long it takes. I am already in this process, and I cannot continue if I do not face this. 

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