Defining Myself in Positive Energy - Day 135

You guys. I'm so amazing.

An interesting thing happens when I try to write about family "issues." First a desire for attention from others which has historically been a point within any sharing of "problems," especially family related, since I have often been so confused within myself about how to identify or define said "problems" and so have wanted to read the definitions of others on their faces or in their reactions / words. But then, as I see myself reel (real) that in and begin to like "gift" that attention to myself, I see another "problem" in terms of the positive energy I can give myself and create by myself, which is still not stability, still not self honest, still not what is best for all. I have not listened to this interview but the description leads me to believe it could be pertinent: A Friend in Mind from the Future of Consciousness series.

One thing that stands out in what I just wrote is wanting to read the definitions of the "problems" in others, and yet when I "gift" this to myself the definition becomes purely a positive energetic charge of how great I am for dealing with such "problems" rather than a practical look at the problem itself and a practical solution. So here I can see that when I sought for others to define and explain what I was experiencing for me, what I often got was either a dismissal or a praise of what I was going through, so a definition really of myself and who I was in that experience. Most often this was some kind of praise or laud for being so "strong," which didn't really clear up any confusion on how to deal, just simply kept me doing whatever it was I was doing, which, over the years, has varied, but has never really served as a real solution, and at times has been quite detrimental / self-abusive.


I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see the "problems" I have experienced throughout my life for and as exactly what they are in the physical reality as their components, contributors, and consequences, instead seeing them only through and as my mind as my reactions, emotions, confusion, beliefs, and judgments.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe within confused reactions that I am not capable of identifying and defining my own experiences.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to look to others to show me these definitions, although never really outright asking for a definition or asking for help, but instead painting a picture or telling a story and then judging and perceiving based on what I interpret from the other person's reaction who is hearing my story.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to confuse the reactions I have received regarding who another person believes I am with definitive feedback on the situations or "problems" themselves.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to morph my confusion and desire for feedback / advice / perspective into a desire for praise of who I am within these experiences / who I am within the way I present myself in relation to these experiences.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to elaborate upon my stories of my experiences in such a way that I could manipulate the other person to see me as "strong" and so to tell me I am "strong" or otherwise seem impressed and so to give me that positive energetic charge while at the same time reinforcing my position as a victim who does not deserve such hardship.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to assume the victim role rather than seeking out actual practical solutions, so that here I have basically grown out of the situations / problems themselves, and yet am still dealing with and walking through the consequences, many of which I created within my reactions to the problems as delineated above as my participation as victim and exaggeration / seeking out bigger problems so as to receive bigger "support" / attention.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to have ever really supported myself but instead created personalities and characters to deal and cope with the "problems" as familial "issues" that transpired in my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood so that here now I have been left only with these personalities and characters still acting out as me in my daily life as I meet new situations that remind me of these old "problems" and "issues."

I forgive myself therefore that I accepted and allowed myself to react to the "problems" and "issues" within my family during my adolescence through self-abusive behaviors such a self-mutilation and starving myself because I saw these as "solutions" which to me at the time meant in part a way to garner the positive attention of others, to have others pity me, to have others tell me how brave or strong I am, to have others want to save me, and also thus to have the positive attention of myself where, even though I professed to hate myself, I also at the same time pitied myself and believed myself to be brave and strong for living through these trials and for surviving, and I saw myself as a victim, and so I saw myself as my own savior if I was able to survive, imagining into my future when I might have some great story to tell about how I managed through these dark times.

I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to physically abuse myself as a way to gain some kind of control, within this "holding on" to reaction and mind energy, manifested and inflicted then on my body, rather than letting go and seeing and being and breathing. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to exacerbate pre-existing problems outside of my control by creating new problems for myself that I believed to be within my control, but which quickly took control over me, all because I wanted the problems to be so big that no one could deny them, and yet this never happened, and I continued to not trust myself and to deny myself within this exacerbation and self abuse.

So I forgive myself then also for accepting and allowing myself to distract myself from the real "problems" and "issues" at hand within reality, instead creating my own internal realities and also manipulating actual reality through my participation in self-abusive behavior, distracting myself from actual real practical solutions, not supporting myself absolutely, instead sabotaging myself, creating more and greater problems for myself through my reactions, because I was confused as to why what was happening was happening and so I thought that if I could make matters worse maybe it would become clearer to me through the reactions of others that something was really wrong, rather than simply trusting myself as my experience that something was wrong, and then doing whatever I could to support myself through those trials to create something right within and as myself, instead turning to more wrongs within to match the wrongs without.

And along the topic of self injury as reflected upon more recent experiences of the desire to hurt myself:
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resort to self injury as a solution to emotional turmoil and negative energetic experiences, as a quick-fix way of stopping these experiences while at the same time growing them bigger, not supporting myself, in fact physically abusing myself, manifesting and inflicting my mind onto my body. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to physically punish myself for the thoughts and emotions that I create and allow within my mind, believing this to be the solution. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to imagine hurting myself at some times of emotional turmoil and to imagine this as a relief and as if it would somehow make things better, so in a way carrying out retribution on myself, wanting to punish myself for my wrongs, but here I see this does nothing supportive for change and only makes matters worse.

And:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to basically want to explain and express the specifics of the "familial issues" that are here in front of me in large part because I want the energetic charge of going into it all and sharing it with others and then seeing their reactions.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want the energetic charge that I get from describing the positive ways I have approached a point so as to believe that others will admire me or think I am doing a good job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to go into specific details of what is going on so as to garner the attention of others who I believe / project will be like "amazed" that "wow, all of that is going on, and she is sure handling it well."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself also to want to go into specific details about my family as if it absolutely matters and is imperative information for the sharing of what I have discovered through private writings on the subject.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to notice my own strengths and then to want to basically brag about them, to get others to notice them as well, and then to get the energetic charge of either believing that others admire me or in fact receiving such praise.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing my own admiration of myself as who I am in any given moment to be enough for me.

I see that it can be and in fact is enough, if I let it be enough. I see a stark difference now than even just a few months ago in terms of the desire I have to over-share details in order to gain attention. I see the point is still here, but it is getting smaller.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes or often get overly focused on the details of my own family "issues" or other problems of mine such that I believe they are enormous and like the worst things that could happen to anybody.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes get locked into even the attention I can give myself, even the positive praise that I manufacture within my mind for myself for how strong and stable I am / can be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get caught up in the "issues" of my own small life such that I ignore the bigger issues that affect all life, that bring death to life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get locked into my own desire for attention either from myself or others such that I become narrow in my vision of what matters, believing that my experiences are greater or more important than the experiences of others, where here I realize that actually despite whatever "problems" exist within my family I am mostly extremely "lucky" in terms of family and EXTREMELY "lucky" in terms of my own position in society / this world system.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to create problems within my mind through and as my mind consciousness system based on my own limited experiences and memories and belief systems without regard for what is happening world-wide or even simply just with my neighbor.

I commit myself to standing in stability always in all ways. I commit myself to standing in stability for the sake of all life. I commit myself to acknowledging when I am stable, but to then continue in the next breath within that stability as whatever is here in that breath, rather than remaining stuck in the positive reaction of the attention or praise that I could give myself. I commit myself to doing this because it is what is best for all, and living what is best for all is my goal -- not gaining praise either from myself or others.


Past Pertinent Posts:

• Self Injury PROCESSING
• My Mother, Myself (Part 1) - Day 134

A First Step in Continuing On - Day 115

http://creationsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2013/08/my-dad-devil.html

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not believe what I was reading, to think perhaps it was a trick, it couldn't possibly be true.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to perseverate on the thought, "I will never meet him," where within this thought and my repetition of this thought I am getting myself stuck in a moment in time as the moment of this shift / change in physical reality and this new information, rather than integrating this change into and as myself, existent anew in every new moment of the here and now as what is here in physical reality. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to repeat this thought in my mind as like a brick-by-brick thought-by-thought imprisonment of myself within the past of this morning of the moment I read those words and reacted, realizing that if I allow myself to repeat this thought, there in that moment in that reaction I will remain.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wonder then, "What's next? What now?"

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think about the dissolution of the group, how things might crumble or fall apart, not realizing within this thought that here I am only really thinking about myself -- my own dissolution as my participation in this group, where here I am looking for an excuse or an out, a reason to stop, because here I believe that the group will not continue, the support will not continue, and/or the direction inasmuch as there has been a kind of "leader" will not continue, within this an energetic thought of like, "well, so much for that."

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself thus to be my own self directive principle within these thoughts of myself and my continued self education, direction, expansion, where within the thoughts above I am giving myself as my direction of myself over to the circumstances which have come to pass and my reaction to those circumstances, allowing myself to establish beliefs within my reactions, beliefs by which I will then direct myself, rather than continuing to direct myself within, as, by, and through my breath, in the physical, in self honesty and self responsibility, in honor of myself and all as life.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand how the "group," just like all of humanity, is made up of individuals, and the individual direction determines the direction of the "group," just as of humanity, which is what we have been doing here all along, each changing our individual selves so as to contribute to and change the entirety of life. We are the group. We are humanity. I am the group. I am humanity.

So here now I commit myself to letting go of reactions to continue on into the next moment and all moments thereafter. I commit myself to continue to walk moment by moment, breath by breath, in each moment and breath in the physical of the here and now, as one individual for change, continuing my own self education, self direction, and self expansion, continuing in self honesty, self support, and self responsibility, continuing simply because it is what is best for all and I cannot deny that as the epitome of any life's purpose.



Thanks, Bernard. Thanks, every one.

Hindsight? Why Not See NOW? - Day 106

After writing Betrayal - Day 104, I decided to send a message to the friend who was like the "ring-leader" of the whole ordeal. I simply said I was sorry:

I'm sorry I was depressed and needy and made it difficult for you to hang out with [E]. I'm sorry I got so reactive and upset and felt betrayed by you guys. I'm sorry I ended our friendship because of my reactions and my inability to cope with emotions / change / things ([E] moving in) I didn't want and couldn't control. We had so much fun together. I hope you're doing well.

I noticed even after I sent it and I browsed his facebook page a little I felt jealous and bitter still, just a little bit. I could see clearly a particular interaction I had neglected to look at / write out. For moments within this I partially regretted sending the message and the friend request (oh, the digital age), because I thought: Am I really ready to see stuff pop up in my news feed? Am I really ready to forgive myself, and forgive him, and move on? But I just breathed through this, within the realization I had already sent it, and also the realization that yes! I'm ready. I can do this. It isn't magic, it will be work, but I can do this, I have the tools, and it is time to do this, for myself. I'm the only one who can do this, and I want it to be done.

I just heard back from him this afternoon, and when I saw I had the message from him I was a little anxious. Like, oh boy, what if he's going to dredge up the past, what if he wants to have it out? He didn't.

Hi Kaitlee,
I was just thinking about contacting you a few weeks ago. I didn't because I feared your rejection. I'm sorry for hurting you so badly. I'm sorry that I let my stress and depression get in the way of being a friend to you. You were one of the closest friends I have ever had. I've missed you.
I hope that life has been good to you.

I did matter to him. All the things I thought about and projected onto him as my reactions, my assumptions that he was intentionally trying to hurt me, that he didn't care about me, all of that, were just lies I was telling myself, lies I've carried with me for years to inform my movements every single day. 

Now, I did try to open up communication a lot during the time that this all occurred. And I can't say for sure why it did or did not support a solution. I do think my friends didn't want to face themselves in it all. But fuck I did not want to lose them. I tried to get them to understand me. But I didn't try at all to understand them, or even really understand myself -- so maybe that was a big part of the problem. 

What was most interesting to me that I learned from writing out that post as a general realization about grudges and ending friendships, was how really I only hurt myself and my friends by choosing my reactions. I thought I was protecting myself, I thought I was like "standing up" for myself by holding so tightly onto my reactions as being "right" and "valid" and holding onto the idea that they were wrong, they were jerks, I didn't deserve that, I can never forgive them, they deserve horrible things. I thought I was having a back bone in that. I also thought I had to do that to survive. 

But the whole time I was just hurting myself and hurting my friends. I was just creating more pain and suffering. For myself, through my rigidity within my reaction, through deceiving and manipulating myself into holding onto my reaction despite any potential for change. Suffering for them, telling them they were horrible people, cutting into them with my words through a letter that delineated all they had done wrong. Suffering for everyone around me, as I made it like a central feature of my life that was just always at the forefront of my mind, ready to tell anyone who would listen about this horrible thing that had happened. And suffering again for myself in the long-term, as this experience and my reactions carved out the shape of who I am today.

I mean really every single part of who I was in that situation was a choice, and it could have gone so much differently if I had chosen differently. We could have all stayed friends. I could have at least not been miserable and paranoid and not drawn conclusions about myself or "people in general" or "friendships" based on that experience. Letting my emotions do the living for me isn't working. Running away from friendships isn't fucking working. Running away from myself isn't even fucking possible. I hurt myself, and these guys, who were like my family, so much, by choosing to honor my emotions more than honoring the reality of co-existing with other human beings, and loving and supporting myself and others unconditionally as one and equal as life. What would have happened if I had just stopped and breathed? Like really stopped myself, stopped the momentum of those reactions, stopped the build up of the justifications. STOPPED. I would have seen that none of it mattered! I would have seen that I was okay, and I would have been okay. I would have directed myself to make self supportive decisions within self honesty about who I would hang out with, but not punished others or myself through reactivity and emotions. I could have found stability. I could have found understanding, seeing another as myself, seeing myself, taking responsibility for myself.

But, I don't have a time machine. What I do have is the ability to write, to say I'm sorry, and to forgive. And I've done that. And it feels good. I mean this was a big big thing I've held onto all these years. I am interested to see where I can go from here. I'm interested too, to see how I can use this realization to direct myself now, in present grudges.

And now, five years later, I regret the way I reacted back then. I wish I'd been able to see then what I can see now. Five years later! Do I want to wait five years to see myself again, as who I am now in this moment? Do I want to direct who I am now in blindness, in alignment with myself as my emotions, only to later finally see? People say "hindsight is 20/20," but I think that's just an excuse. I think that's just complacence in regret. I could have seen myself then, if I'd had these tools. And I can see myself now, if I just stop and breathe.

So, now, I have to stop myself. Now, I have to see what matters (hint: not my petty mind games, not my ego, not what I think I know about anyone else). Now, I can foresee the consequences of who I am. Now, I have to see how everything about who I am now, is a choice. I am choosing this. I am choosing a grudge. I am choosing anger. I am choosing resentment. I am choosing bitterness. In choosing these things, I am choosing inequality, separation, and myself as my ego and my mind. In this, I am also choosing a future of regret, of feeling like I didn't do what I wish I had done, of looking back on a friendship lost. Well, no more. I choose, instead: self support, in self honesty, in equality and oneness, as what is best for all. I am choosing to write myself out, thus, to do the work of seeing myself, to face myself before this grudge has a chance to take hold and cover me up.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make a decision about myself and my friendships based in emotional reactivity and judgments, projections, blame, and a sense of insecurity within myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abdicate my own responsibility for myself, expecting instead for others to take care of me, for others to do as I want them to do in order to keep "my world" looking the way I wanted it to look, expecting others to adapt and adjust to me, expecting others to walk on eggshells for me, expecting others to come with me into my mind into my paranoia into my imaginary reality where things I do not want to see do not exist, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect others, my friends, like family, people about whom I claimed to care, to actually do the work along with me of manipulating my reality to fit what I had wanted through and as the walls and defenses of my mind.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really see myself during that time, to see how I was holding on to my grudges as a way to be "right" and as a way to have like power, a way to have a sense of control, and a way to be domineering and have a hand in implementing consequences and punishments unto others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to manipulate my own reality as my experiences as the people with whom I interact and the activities I enjoy in order to punish or enforce consequences for another, so that it's like I don't even care that I'm miserable as long as another is miserable too, because I perceive that the other made me miserable first, and so rather than take responsibility for myself and make myself un-miserable, I make myself even more miserable in an effort to also make the other miserable.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to direct myself and my future into a place of misery and paranoia and fear, all for the sake of trying to punish or create consequences for another whom I perceive has hurt me, where here I give myself the power to punish but I do not give myself the power to heal, which is strange, like if I am powerless and helpless in terms of healing myself, what makes me think I am almighty and powerful in terms of punishing another?

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to invest so much of myself into creating consequences and punishment for another, and also myself, rather than simply stopping, breathing, writing myself out and taking responsibility for myself, continuing to move through life in each breath in each moment, rather than conniving and planning another's demise at the expense of my own.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to end friendships based on temporary emotional reactions which I build up and convince myself are "real" and "valid" and "meaningful" in terms of being accurate and worthy like road maps for me to direct myself by, so therefore I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be directed and driven by my emotional reactions.

So now I commit myself to when and as I see myself participating in a grudge, stop and breathe. I realize that this has far reaching consequences for myself and others. I realize that in every instance now of grudgery that I have created for myself, every single one of them has come around full circle to a realization that it was not necessary, that it was not self honest, it was not even beneficial to me, and it certainly obviously is not aligned with principles of equality and oneness as what is best for all. I realize that grudges are separation and participation within my mind as my ego. I also realize that I have grudges still before me to work through, old and new. So I commit myself really to stop and breathe when I see myself participating in the maintenance of the sentiments related to a grudge. I commit myself to writing out these relationships I have created with these people. I commit myself to clearing the points that I find. I commit myself to aligning myself with equality and oneness as what is best for all within the realization that this is a work for my own benefit as well as the benefit of the other, and the benefit of all.

Betrayal - Day 104

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

Betrayal.

Sitting on their roof

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does it really mean to stand up for myself? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

I am not who I think I am. 

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


Other relationships to investigate:

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

Blaming My Physical Environment for Who I Am - Day 100

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Memories of Lived Environments - Day 59

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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


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

Experiencing Memories as I Breathe - Day 58

I have a memory from about a year ago where my mom and I are fighting and I am taking a deep breath to "center" myself and she reacts to my breath as if it is a sigh that indicates I am frustrated or upset or am judging her or some other negative meaning for the breath. She accuses me of these things and when I say that I was just taking a deep breath she says "no, I know you" and again accuses me of sighing in a way that has somehow offended her.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold onto this memory within a negative/emotional energy charge where when I remember this interaction with my mother I become upset, bitter, resentful, and experience backchat about my mother's mothering skills.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to link this memory with times when I breathe audibly and especially with times when I breathe audibly and perceive that others are noticing my breath and then I assume/project that others believe I am sighing in exasperation and that within my deep breath I am being misunderstood by others as being frustrated or mad or in a bad mood.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold onto specifically the words "no, I know you" where I felt a particular pang of emotional pain because here my mother was claiming she knew me as my mother and that within this interaction I perceived that she actually did not know me because here she was accusing me of something I was not doing and not trusting or believing or respecting me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become emotionally/negatively charged within this memory to where I get caught up in re-creating negative emotions, thoughts, and beliefs about my mother when my mother is not even present and when our relationship has improved past this point. Here I also forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to remember this argument and our relationship from the perspective that I did not contribute to the dysfunction of our relationship at this period in our lives and that my mom was "the one" who was making it bad. We are one and equal; our participation was one and equal, or else it never would have gotten to the point it did.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to be aware of and then deliberately ignore my participation in the dysfunction of my mother's and my relationship a year ago because I justified/excused my behavior within me being the child and her being the mother wherein I rationalized that because of these biological roles I had no responsibility and she had all the responsibility. So here I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to be one and equal with my mother as life as what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to project this memory outward to where when I take a deep audible breath I assume/project that others are noticing this breath and then assume/project that others are having a reaction to my breath similar to the reaction my mother displayed a year ago, and then within this I become self-conscious of my breath to where for a split second I wonder if I should contain my breath or if I should explain myself or I become worried about what will happen next, like if the person will say something or if they will express the reaction I have assumed/projected onto them, and then if it will turn into a misunderstanding.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to my assumptions/projections of others within feeling misunderstood when there is no reality based evidence that I have been misunderstood. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that it is my responsibility to make myself understood when others misunderstand me through their own interpretations/perceptions/assumptions/projections.

(Would be good to come back to this fear of being misunderstood and mis-allocation of responsibility within understanding where I have placed it wholly in my responsibility to have others understand me when I cannot control their minds and thus their perceptions)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create this conflict association with audible deep breathing where not only do I go into this memory but I also project this memory into my present circumstances/interactions, creating a fear of this memory repeating, and also creating the repetition of this memory within my mind through and as the negative/emotional energetic charges that I create in relation to this memory.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to take deep breaths for, as, and by myself without the association of this memory or the sense of obligation to not "make" others feel a certain way or "make" others think that I am upset.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to bastardize my breath so that it is not purely a self-supportive tool for supporting myself as one as all as equal as life as what is best for all.



When and as I see myself breathing a deep audible breath and then experiencing this memory, I stop and I breathe again. I realize that this is a memory of something that happened but that it happened in the past and it has no bearing on me now. I realize that I have connected with this experience and my memory of this experience negative/emotional energy and that in participating in remembering this experience I am assisting myself in participating in the creation of this energy. I commit myself to stop myself from engaging within and as the emotional charges that I create within this memory. I commit myself to watch the memory without emotional charge. I commit myself to erase the emotional charge from this memory so that when this memory comes up I do not allow it to direct me into negative/emotional energy. From here I commit myself to release myself of this memory as irrelevant and unnecessary to repeat in my mind.

When and as I see myself breathing a deep audible breath and then assuming/projecting that others are reacting to my breath as if it is a "sigh" indicative of frustration or feeling upset, I stop and I breathe again. I realize that often when I take deep audible breaths I am in fact frustrated and this is often why I am stopping and breathing to begin with. I realize that being upset or frustrated is a great reason to stop and breathe. I realize that I should not be afraid of others noticing that I am breathing when I am frustrated or upset, that this is in fact an excellent example of how to deal with these energies. I realize that I am stopping and breathing first and foremost to assist and support myself and that no matter what another person may or may not think about my breath, I breathe for myself as what is best for all life, one and equal. I realize that by assuming/projecting reactions to my breath onto others, I am not fully experiencing my breath and so here I must stop and breathe again.

When and as I see myself participating in the perpetuation of memories and the creation of emotional energy around memories of my mother and I fighting, I stop and I breathe. I realize that these memories are still emotionally charged because in many ways this part of our relationship has not been "dealt with" but nonetheless we have moved past these moments to being more supportive of and equal and one with each other. I realize that there is absolutely no benefit to myself or my relationship with my mother in holding onto these memories within these emotional charges. I commit myself to investigating these memories and their charges in more detail if I must, and I commit myself to releasing myself from these emotional charges and forgiving myself and forgiving my mother for our actions and who we were within these moments of these memories. I commit myself to putting the past behind me in every new moment and to move forward within self-honesty and self-responsibility as the self-directive principle of myself in equality and oneness as what is best for all.