Guilt
I feel it coming on.
Electricity pulsing underneath my skin
I can’t breathe
My breaths are shorter and forced
The feeling that I want no one
But I need someone to hold me
This feeling is like an old lover that disappears for weeks at a time but shows up just as soon as you’ve got everything under control. He’s comforting in an “I want to go to sleep and never wake up type of way”. He never lets you forget where you came from. I would watch for him in every dark alley of my mind, in every drink that flowed down my throat, I knew he would be back and I didn’t know if he was stronger this time or maybe I was - maybe the books, the meditations, the long talks with friends would work this time but maybe not and that “maybe not” is what always scares the shit out of me.
I wrote this in the midst of a panic attack last week - I revisited it today and I was hit with a ton of emotions. I was embarrassed, were the feelings I felt at that time over dramatized? Was I just wanting attention? I think this is something that a lot of people that suffer from anxiety deal with, especially if they have surrounded themselves with people who don’t have it or aren’t willing to learn about this, at times, crippling condition. I feel like I’ve grown so accustomed to apologizing for the way I feel my entire life that I do so even when that’s not what someone is looking for and it brought me to a something that I have struggled with my entire life.
Guilt.
I feel mass amounts of guilt on a regular basis and I have for as far back as I can remember.
Guilt has driven me to…
Spend money I didn't have
Stay in toxic friendships
Sleep in beds I didn’t want to
Change myself
Apologize when I had done nothing wrong
Lie
Compromise my morals
Not allow myself to mourn
So how do I stop? How do I stop feeling like everything bad that has happened to me is payback for a choice I had made? How do I accept that some people aren't meant to be in our lives and probably don't deserve to be? How do prove to myself that if I would have visited my dad more, he wouldn't have died? How could I not blame my partner’s infidelity on something I lacked? How do I not cry myself to sleep because of the email I received from the school counselor describing one of my children's "anxious tendencies" and not feel like I passed this disease to him? And when someone close to me starts therapy because of depression how is it not my immediate reaction is that I must have rubbed off on them?
The older I get, the less I feel guilt for immediate decisions I make - especially when I know that I am putting myself first in those decisions. This has allowed me to feel less long-term guilt - I may be declining dinner plans at the time and feel bad about it but long term I feel better and that validates my decisions. I also am more vocal about why I am making the decision I am making. I would lie sometimes when I didn't want to do something because I felt that my reason wasn't good enough - that always made me feel shittier. Now I'm honest and it's a great feeling when you hear a friend say, "that's cool, don't worry about it" - so I don't wander about my house for the next week assuming that person hates me.
I mentioned my dad's death earlier, so much guilt surrounds this topic. When I found out he had died, I sat for days thinking about every airline ticket I had purchased, every concert I had gone to, every outfit I had bought and every other dime I had spent for the last 8 years. I could have used that money to buy a flight to Texas, he could have met his grandchildren and maybe I would have been able to open up to him like I had never done so in the past. But I didn't. Now I was on a flight to his funeral to meet the sisters that I hadn't seen since they were little girls and a sister I had never met - I sat there and assumed this whole situation was my fault. I visited his apartment when I got there, one of my baby pictures laid out on his kitchen table and it felt like a knife in my heart - why wasn't I there when he needed me? Could I have saved him? Was I the reason he died?
But ya know what, my dad never once visited me - he never made the trip to Indiana from Texas. A lot of times I wouldn't hear from him for months or longer. He made a lot of promises that he didn't keep to me. He wasn't a bad person, I know that he adored me and my sisters but he was lost too, he had his own demons. After a lot of reflecting and a whole lot of therapy I learned that we all deal with guilt so that's why we have to be vocal now, we have to let people know how we feel and what we are feeling because when you do that it can't get misconstrued - you get rid of that guilt before it even has a chance to seep into your pores. I recently felt a lot of guilt after a recent friends death because I felt as though the amount of grief I was feeling wasn't warranted because I hadn't been as close to him as others. I told myself over and over that the way I felt was foolish and that I should be taking care of the others that deserved to grieve and stop feeling sorry for myself. I opened up to close friends about that feeling and was quickly assured that I was grieving the right way and that there was no right way.
I feel like when I write these blogs I'm all over the place but what I am getting at is talk to someone - preferably those that you know support you and love you. Beware of the ones who see you as prey and will take this chance to drag you down and make you feel worse. If you have the resources, for the love of all that is beautiful, go see a therapist. Write down your thoughts, I feel a little less crazy once I get everything out. Find someone who is going through something similar. We don't deserve to walk through life with unnecessary guilt. We deserve to make good decisions and trust the decisions we make.
Electricity pulsing underneath my skin
I can’t breathe
My breaths are shorter and forced
The feeling that I want no one
But I need someone to hold me
This feeling is like an old lover that disappears for weeks at a time but shows up just as soon as you’ve got everything under control. He’s comforting in an “I want to go to sleep and never wake up type of way”. He never lets you forget where you came from. I would watch for him in every dark alley of my mind, in every drink that flowed down my throat, I knew he would be back and I didn’t know if he was stronger this time or maybe I was - maybe the books, the meditations, the long talks with friends would work this time but maybe not and that “maybe not” is what always scares the shit out of me.
I wrote this in the midst of a panic attack last week - I revisited it today and I was hit with a ton of emotions. I was embarrassed, were the feelings I felt at that time over dramatized? Was I just wanting attention? I think this is something that a lot of people that suffer from anxiety deal with, especially if they have surrounded themselves with people who don’t have it or aren’t willing to learn about this, at times, crippling condition. I feel like I’ve grown so accustomed to apologizing for the way I feel my entire life that I do so even when that’s not what someone is looking for and it brought me to a something that I have struggled with my entire life.
Guilt.
I feel mass amounts of guilt on a regular basis and I have for as far back as I can remember.
Guilt has driven me to…
Spend money I didn't have
Stay in toxic friendships
Sleep in beds I didn’t want to
Change myself
Apologize when I had done nothing wrong
Lie
Compromise my morals
Not allow myself to mourn
So how do I stop? How do I stop feeling like everything bad that has happened to me is payback for a choice I had made? How do I accept that some people aren't meant to be in our lives and probably don't deserve to be? How do prove to myself that if I would have visited my dad more, he wouldn't have died? How could I not blame my partner’s infidelity on something I lacked? How do I not cry myself to sleep because of the email I received from the school counselor describing one of my children's "anxious tendencies" and not feel like I passed this disease to him? And when someone close to me starts therapy because of depression how is it not my immediate reaction is that I must have rubbed off on them?
The older I get, the less I feel guilt for immediate decisions I make - especially when I know that I am putting myself first in those decisions. This has allowed me to feel less long-term guilt - I may be declining dinner plans at the time and feel bad about it but long term I feel better and that validates my decisions. I also am more vocal about why I am making the decision I am making. I would lie sometimes when I didn't want to do something because I felt that my reason wasn't good enough - that always made me feel shittier. Now I'm honest and it's a great feeling when you hear a friend say, "that's cool, don't worry about it" - so I don't wander about my house for the next week assuming that person hates me.
I mentioned my dad's death earlier, so much guilt surrounds this topic. When I found out he had died, I sat for days thinking about every airline ticket I had purchased, every concert I had gone to, every outfit I had bought and every other dime I had spent for the last 8 years. I could have used that money to buy a flight to Texas, he could have met his grandchildren and maybe I would have been able to open up to him like I had never done so in the past. But I didn't. Now I was on a flight to his funeral to meet the sisters that I hadn't seen since they were little girls and a sister I had never met - I sat there and assumed this whole situation was my fault. I visited his apartment when I got there, one of my baby pictures laid out on his kitchen table and it felt like a knife in my heart - why wasn't I there when he needed me? Could I have saved him? Was I the reason he died?
But ya know what, my dad never once visited me - he never made the trip to Indiana from Texas. A lot of times I wouldn't hear from him for months or longer. He made a lot of promises that he didn't keep to me. He wasn't a bad person, I know that he adored me and my sisters but he was lost too, he had his own demons. After a lot of reflecting and a whole lot of therapy I learned that we all deal with guilt so that's why we have to be vocal now, we have to let people know how we feel and what we are feeling because when you do that it can't get misconstrued - you get rid of that guilt before it even has a chance to seep into your pores. I recently felt a lot of guilt after a recent friends death because I felt as though the amount of grief I was feeling wasn't warranted because I hadn't been as close to him as others. I told myself over and over that the way I felt was foolish and that I should be taking care of the others that deserved to grieve and stop feeling sorry for myself. I opened up to close friends about that feeling and was quickly assured that I was grieving the right way and that there was no right way.
I feel like when I write these blogs I'm all over the place but what I am getting at is talk to someone - preferably those that you know support you and love you. Beware of the ones who see you as prey and will take this chance to drag you down and make you feel worse. If you have the resources, for the love of all that is beautiful, go see a therapist. Write down your thoughts, I feel a little less crazy once I get everything out. Find someone who is going through something similar. We don't deserve to walk through life with unnecessary guilt. We deserve to make good decisions and trust the decisions we make.
Comments
Post a Comment