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.

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.