Wow, so I’m back on here already. I’m surprised as well. I said I’d be back to continue my thoughts from yesterday and I’m keeping my word, dear reader. That’s just how I’ve been operating lately.
Toward the end of my sixth session, I had this strange moment where I thought about my family. I wouldn’t say it was anything specific, but I felt nothing. I don’t mean that in a bad way, per se, but I was somewhat dissociating from my feelings toward them. I think that was important for me, because I’ve always had issues with my family, even if they don’t realize it. I’m the oldest kid (in my 40s and referring to myself as a kid, even using the adjective “little” when referring to my siblings even though they’re adults as well) and checked off all the adult things that you’re supposed to do:
- Graduate High School
- Get a Bachelor’s Degree
Get marriedBuy a house
Did those things and felt like nobody cared. My siblings, who don’t have as many checkmarks, seem to be the priority. Nothing was good enough for my father, but I ended that relationship years ago. I wouldn’t say the same about my mother, but she seems… indifferent, or maybe just doesn’t think to say the one thing that neither she nor my father have ever said to me even one time in my life. No, it isn’t “I love you”.
“I’m proud of you.”
Not my parents
This ate at me for years. I kept trying everything I could to get them to say those words, but after a while I just grew bitter and angry about it. After that moment behind the curtain, I just stopped caring about it. I felt nothing about them. It’s like an emotional reset button was hit. In that moment, I tried to make myself wonder how I would feel if someone in my family died and I still felt nothing. Again, I don’t say this to mean I’ve become apathetic, but I just stopped putting weight into things like that. They’re people like everyone else; just a randomization of characteristics that others have, with whom I have no connection to. With my family, I do share at least a couple characteristics. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about them, but just knowing that after my death experience in the previous expedition, it isn’t bad and really doesn’t truly end anything at all. I came out of it feeling lighter and made me a little more present in conversations with them. I don’t speak with them with some buried bitterness that they don’t appreciate me, even if I still feel that they don’t. I’m just not holding it against them anymore.
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m more direct with how i’m feeling about something when dealing with other people. At first I thought that maybe my temper was getting worse, but I’ve learned that isn’t the case. If someone was “shitty” toward me before, there was a small chance that I would snap back at them, but usually I would just take it and let it eat at me afterward, sometimes for years on end. Literally one interaction would live rent-free in my head for that long. There have been a couple instances in the last couple weeks where I wasn’t happy with how someone talked to me or just a bad situation in general, but now I call it out immediately and I’ve noticed that the other person is just stunned and doesn’t know how to respond. I don’t mean that i’m just motherfucking these people and intentionally being hurtful toward them, but I’m checking them immediately in the moment, and if I think about the interaction later, it’s more of a reflection than rumination. I’m less concerned with how the other person is going to react to the message, emotionally, and really only being concerned that I’m heard.
The biggest thing that I’ve noticed, however, I wasn’t even aware of until I looked at the session notes. Once a week, I get asked a series of basic psych questions. Here are just a few of them that are of note:
- How is your sleep?
- I can’t get to sleep, but I stay asleep once I do
- Have you had suicidal thoughts?
- The thought briefly crossed my mind years and years and years ago, but nothing more than a passing thought
- Do you have feelings of guilt?
- …………
The first two answers are always the same. The last one changed.
I joked during the first one: “Well I was raised catholic, so of course I feel guilty about everything!”
The reality was much worse. I felt guilty about everything that I’ve ever done, even if nobody was affected by it or if they didn’t realize that I did something to them that I felt guilty about. Dear reader, if you know me then you know some of the things I’ve felt guilty about. If you know me really well, then you have a treasure chest filled with my guilty feelings. The hearts I’ve broken… The people I’ve hurt… The people who would be devastated if they knew what I did. These things are all legal in the eyes of the law, so chill out. No laws were broken at the time, though I guess they might not be legal now; at best they’re in a gray area, like how I’ve lived my life, I suppose.
None of the things I could take back and it tortured me daily. Messing around with someone when I was in a relationship, once while the person I was in the relationship with was passed out drunk in the next room. Having an entire second relationship with a person while still in a relationship. A relationship with a co-worker, with whom I had grown very close to, while, you guessed it… not single. For what it’s worth, they all knew I wasn’t single and one was even married. I enjoyed it and it made me feel happy and alive during a time where I was otherwise cold and dead, but unable to express that and change my situation. Then there’s the moment of getting a text that says “we need to talk right now” and what follows. If you know what I’m alluding to, then you understand, dear reader. I won’t go beyond that at this time, but I reserve the right to elaborate later. I felt so much guilt over hurting the person I was in the relationship with and never admitted to any of it, even though it had to have been known or at least strongly assumed. I felt guilt over hurting the one I was in the aforementioned “second relationship” with because promises I made were not kept. I wouldn’t go more than a day or two before it would come to mind and I’d be forced to think about it. Then I looked at the questions asked again recently and something dawned on me….
- Do you have feelings of guilt?
- (quickly and matter of factly) No.
I did what I did. Outside of the person I was in the actual relationship with, all parties knew the deal. I enjoyed my time. I felt something. It was what I needed at the time. I learned a lot from the experiences. I still might have hurt the one girl in the “second relationship”, dear reader, but things ultimately worked out for her last I checked. She’s happy and married, maybe even happily married. I made promises and wasn’t able to keep them. I’m human. Did I make the promises at the time knowing I would never actually keep them and was just saying what I thought she wanted me to say? Not at all. I meant it all, but things just didn’t work out that way. I’ve suffered enough in my mind over the years to make up for a million “wrongdoings”, so I subconsciously just moved on from it all. What good is torturing oneself?
I’m at a point now where even if the person I was in the relationship with were to find out, I wouldn’t care. It’s not like they didn’t already assume it, and if I’m being really honest, if they had done even the slightest thing to make my life better, none of the stuff may have even happened in the first place. Sure, I blame myself for putting myself in that situation and for as long as I did, but I’m done wishing things had gone differently or go back to fantasyland and dream of a different past with any of them.
As I write this, I cannot honestly tell you one thing that I feel guilty about. I know the things that I used to feel guilty about. It doesn’t discount the magnitude of the events that took place or the impact on the affected parties, but it’s over with. Someone can hold it against me for eternity, as is their personal right, but I am under no obligation to suffer for their sake. I didn’t even realize that this drastic change took place until I just looked at those notes. I didn’t even have to pull the nails out. They just fell out, the holes closed up, I fell off the cross, and landed firmly on my feet. That’s really the only religious reference I would ever make because there’s at least historical evidence of that person’s existence.
In my mind I’ve cleaned the slate. Other people might not feel that way, but even though I know the things happened, I’m operating as if they didn’t because this is my life and I’m not going to continue to suffer in my mind and imagination when there’s nothing right now to suffer in reality. My life, like yours, dear reader, is ending by the second, and I won’t be feeling sorry or guilty about what’s already been done. I need to create happiness, not sorrow.
Speaking of relationships with people in the past, something hit me the other night that I feel like writing about, but that will have to wait until next time; maybe tomorrow, who knows? It involves literally every single person and is a harsh realization that I didn’t know I needed.
Happiness by the Milligram 