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Un vēl
Try this.
Don’t forgive yourself for two months. Keep heaping blame on yourself. Berate yourself. Wallow in grief. Don’t let any new joy or love into your life. Yell at others so they’re upset with you and will help you punish yourself. Wear a thick rubber band around your wrist and every 5 minutes pull it and snap it, hurting yourself. Ask every girl you meet, nicely, if she’d be interested in spanking you- both to hurt you as well as embarrass you. Because you deserve it.
Then at the end of two months, evaluate how well that’s been working for you.
“Forgiving” is a misleading term. Forgiving isn’t really something anyone can do. Sure, you can say it or mean it or something like that. But forgiving is really STOPPING BLAMING. It’s just the end of putting negative energy into your own life about something that happened in the past and isn’t happening any more.
We just get into these habits of hurting ourselves and don’t realize we’re doing it. Your brain is actually putting energy into remembering her and your hopes and how those hopes are gone now. Plus, it thinks it SHOULD do this, that somehow doing this self-punishing effort is going to help it not do it next time. This is some of the very primitive programming of the brain.
To “forgive yourself”, stop trying. Instead, put your energy on noticing what it was thinking of when it started remembering about whats-her-name. How did that unforgiving trigger work? And then notice how it builds up steam. See its mechanisms. Notice what other negative times it associates with it- like some other time you thought you failed or were worthless or not good enough. Notice all the little details of your little “I messed it up” song and dance.
If you do this diligently, it’ll be gone in a few days. But if you forget, and get caught up in the drama as if it’s real, it can last a lifetime. It’s your choice, actually. Unless you pretend it’s not…

HMM

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