It’s been a rough year. I’ve lost a lot, and most of it is my own doing. I’ve made mistakes. Lots of mistakes. I carry a lot of secrets and regrets right now, and I’m not sure how much longer I can bear the load.
I try to learn from my mistakes. I try to approach things objectively and use reason and logic to figure out what to do. Usually, my initial reaction is very emotional and irrational, depending on the severity of the situation. I know that. It’s something I struggle with. But I can usually stifle that until I have time to parse things out and think them out logically. This way of thinking has served me well throughout most of my adult life.
I’m starting to question how useful this is in real life, though.
Is it right to not be upset when a relative dies because their lifestyle directly contributed to it, and they have no one to blame but themselves? It’s logical to prepare yourself for that death in advance, since it’s imminent, but it’s almost inhuman to not even shed a tear when it actually happens.
Is it right to end a relationship that, while not perfect, is mostly functional and makes you extremely happy, just because you see ever-increasing fights on the horizon and logic tells you that ending things now will result in less turmoil and hard feelings in the long run? I thought so. But I’m seeing now that the right thing to do isn’t always the right thing to do. I was a fool, and I’ve lost someone very important to me forever because of it. There’s nothing right about what’s happened here, and I’d give anything to take it back. I was wrong. Logic was wrong.
Does it make sense to never forgive yourself for your mistakes? It’s easy to argue that some things should never be forgiven, and that kind of judgement is always relative. If you believe you’re not allowed to screw up, even the smallest misstep feels like a tragedy. Logic dictates that mistakes can usually be corrected or paid for, and one should learn from it and move on. But people aren’t good at learning from their mistakes. They have a profound capacity for self-denial. As time goes on, the mistake is forgotten or mitigated until one finds himself thinking that it wasn’t THAT bad, and the mistake is repeated. If you always hold yourself accountable for that mistake, and suffer for it, it stays resident. Fear of repeating it becomes almost pathological. It’s always there, and you can never, ever do it again. It’s hellish, but effective.
There’s always a struggle between the mind and the heart, between logic and emotion. I’ve been in two situations in my life when I let emotion overcome; one was with she who shall not be named, in which the logical side turned out to be correct. The other is happening right now, and I believe my fear of losing control of myself again may have made me overreact 5 months ago. I always told her that “you never let something like that happen again”, and I certainly held true to that, but… I have regrets. Big, ever-present, soul crushing regrets. I took things for granted. I avoided dealing with issues until they were right in my face. I thought I’d expressed certain things that I had not. I assumed that she felt the same way that I did, and I thought I could handle things that I could not. Above all, I assumed that the future held infinite opportunity for second chances… And that was yet another giant mistake. The right thing to do in the long term was actually just a temporary fix for my own worries, and now I’m reaping the consequences.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of months thinking about the nature of my relationships with people. Certain people have shown their true colors to me and illustrated just how selfish and narcissistic they can be. That sort of thing colors the entire friendship, since all their actions are now viewed through a different lense. I’ve discovered that the infinite understanding and willingness to help of family is something I’ve taken for granted for a long time. I’ve learned that genuine love is not something to be tossed aside, because it doesn’t come around very often. I’ve learned that above all, though, I can only truly rely on myself. People will always disappoint you eventually.
For the past two days I’ve been sequestered in my house, aside from a couple of long, late night walks, when the city is quiet and I can hear myself think… I’ve been sitting in the dark with a hole in my chest and a mind full of regrets. I don’t know what else to do, other than the standard cliche advice: don’t torture yourself, move on, time heals all wounds, blah blah blah. I don’t want to move on. I deserve the torture after everything I’ve done recently. I deserve to lose her permanently. I deserve every bad thing that happens to me. I was selfish then, and I’m being selfish now by bringing it all up again, and I wish I could stop but I just… Can’t. It consumes me. Every mistake weighs on my mind every minute of every day, and it should, because I deserve it.
On the bright side, I lost another 4 pounds.
I need time to myself. For those who are reaching out, I appreciate the concern, but I need to be alone for a while. I have a lot on my mind, more than I can express or even allude to in a single post, and you can’t help me sort it out.
See you all in a month.
