Life Change

Hey everybody. I know it's been a long time since I have blogged. What can I say? Life has gotten in the way. And not just life. But life's struggles and life's challenges have gotten in the way. In the past couple of months, I have had to come to grips with a few very cold and harsh truths about myself. I have had to face the monster I have had dwelling inside of me face to face and have had to admit things that are not easy to admit. I have had to get smacked with a fucking hard dose of reality and at first, that knocked me flat off my feet and straight on my ass. And I stayed down for a long time. I did what I always do when adversity strikes me. I went into the corner and cowered and wallowed in my own self-pity and misery. I bitched and moaned and pointed fingers elsewhere as I clung to my bitterness and anger. I failed to take responsibility or accountability for the destruction that surrounded me. I laid blame at other people's feet and played the victim. I did what I always have done. I pretended. I tried to act sincere and as if I was understanding something. I pretended to grow and evolve. I made people believe that I was serious about changing my life. But really, I was just fucking deceiving them all. I was playing a game. I was using them and playing them all like a fucking japanese fiddle. Inside, I didn't feel ready to let go. I didn't feel ready to move on. I didn't feel ready to make a change. I talked the talk but I sure as hell wasn't walking the walk. What a fucking miserable coward I was being. And I would go to therapy each week and sit there and have a moment's clarity and for a split second I would be serious about change. And then I would leave the office and I would go right back to my old familiar ways. It's all I knew. It's all I had ever done. I didn't know how to change or be different. And the truth is, I didn't want to find out. I wanted to stay in the same place I had been in my whole life. Even though I was surrounded by misery and despair and unhappiness and all I could do was destroy every thing in my life that meant something to me or ever mattered to me, I still couldn't change. I still couldn't admit the truth. I stayed in this sick and disgusting cycle because I wanted to have an excuse and a justification for the shit I had done. I wanted to have an escape of my terrible choices. I wanted to be able to be able to do bad things, hurt people, inflict damage and then after the fact use the terrible things that I have gone through as my excuse for doing them. You see, I have been going to therapy for a great many months now and yes I have made tremendous progress in opening up my soul and kicking open doors that have been shut for so many years. I have revealed so much pain and sadness that has been buried inside of my subconscious mind. And I have began to realize why I have made the same choices over and over through the years and can't seem to escape that pattern of behavior. And I have figured out a lot about why I have such issues with insecurity and rage and jealousy. But I would walk away from those sessions and only use what I learned about myself as a justification to intensify my bad behavior. When I would dig deep in therapy and finally admit that I hated my mom and my dad and the subsequent guilt I felt for that hatred, it made sense to me suddenly why I was so full of rage. It made sense why I had such pent up aggression. I had never revealed that truth to anyone, not even my own conscious mind. But after I would leave those intense and productive sessions, did I go out and commit myself to be better? Nope, I would go and get drunk or high or wasted. I used what I had learned, those intense revelations about my life, as a way to rationalize my drinking. I needed to get drunk you see because my childhood was so bad. And I needed to get drunk because my mother didn't want me. I needed to get drunk because my dad died and abandoned me and made my life way tougher than it needed to be. I needed to get drunk for all those reasons. But that isn't the truth. The real, honest, and brutal truth is this: I needed to get drunk and high because I needed to escape from all those revelations. I needed to feel self-pity and sorry for myself because I couldn't deal with my problems. I chose to run away from them and become numb to stop feeling them. Unfortunately, the hang over wouldn't last forever and I'd wake up right back where the fuck I started. I couldn't shake the reality of my past and the things that happened and I wasn't one hundred percent wholly committed to moving past them either. I was stuck in the corner wallowing around in my own self-pity and self-loathing. I was clinging to all that hatred and anger and guilt and resentment I had inside. And I wasn't ready to get real. I wasn't ready to let it go. I wasn't ready to accept it. I was only going through the motions. And then that hard smack in the face I alluded to earlier happened. It literally smacked sense into me. It made me face my past and the decisions I had made so poorly due to my inability to accept it and move on. I became very self-aware of the fact that I kept behaving the way I was and destroying all the goodness in my life because I was too damn chicken shit and too damn stubborn to face what had happened and try to deal with it. Instead I used it as an excuse. I used it as a way to play the victim. And when I was faced with this harsh bit of truth, I finally began to get serious about change. I finally started to look in the mirror and face the monster I was carrying around inside of me head on. I was beginning to find my inner strenght and my courage. I started to stare into the darkness of my soul and find determination to go in to that darkness and pull out whatever was hiding in it. I just started to evolve and grow. And it's amazing the conclusion I have come to. I now completely understand that the key to my success and happines is forgiveness. I had to go back in time and remember all the terrible things that happened and had been done to me in order for me to gain acceptance. I had to accept that nothing could be done to change any of it and that I had to let it go. If I wanted to break this vicious cycle I was in,forgiveness was the key. And so I have forgiven. I have forgiven all those people whoever hurt me or brought me pain and misery and sadness. I have forgiven myself for all the sins I have committed. I have forgiven-but not forgotten. That is something I learned along this journey I have been on. Forgiveness doesn't equate forgetting. I will never forget the bad stuff that I have done to others or the hurt that has been inflicted upon me by others but I will not let the memory destroy me. I will not let the memory break me. I will let the memory serve as a lesson and as a way to mold me and shape me into being and doing better. I will let the memory become something positive and not allow it to be a negative that traps me in an emotional and spiritual prison. I will take it for what it is: the past. But I will no longer allow my past to dictate my present. I am better than I was and every day I wake up, I strive to be better than I was yesterday and at the end of the day, I strive to have done more good than bad. And I take it day by day. I don't think of tomorrow because it will bring it's own set of problems and challenges. I simply live for today and understand that I will make mistakes but I am not a fuck up and am not inferior simply because I don't always make the best choice or do the right thing. I want to get better at being consistent at doing those things but I will not hold my mistakes against me.  I am also resolved to not be my own worst enemy any longer. I have spent most of my life sabotaging myself and my chances at happiness and goodness because deep down inside, I didn't deem myself worthy or capable of attaining that stuff. I felt inferior to others and as if my life was somehow less important and meaningful as others. I felt as though others ignored me and rejected me because of my many flaws and imperfections. I now know that isn't true. I allowed them to make me feel that way based on my own insecurities and self-hatred. I believed others when they said I was nothing and I was not deserving of anything of substance. And I allowed them to break my confidence. And I tried to run away from all that by drinking myself  numb.  I tried unsuccessfully because no matter where you go or how drunk or high you get, at the end of the day, you're still you. And you still have the same past and have made the same mistakes. It cannot change. There is no such thing in life as a do over or a dress rehearsal. We don't get another shot to do things right or make things right. We live in the moment and we do what we do. And sometimes what we do is not the right thing and we hurt people and inflict tremendous pain. And as much as I sometimes feel like I wish it didn't happen, the absolute truth is that if I had not acted that way or made that wrong choice, I wouldn't be where I am today as I write this. Which is better and stronger and more self-aware and more committed and more positive. Everything in life happens for a reason and sometimes as much as we may want to go back and change things around, it's for the best that we can't. Lessons don't come cheap. The price of mistakes can be very high but they are necessary and needed to learn and grow. That is the tragic truth about life. I have finally discovered that truth. And I am so thankful and grateful that I have. Without this revelation, I would still be stuck in the endless circle of self-pity, self-destruction and self-loathing. I would still be playing the victim and would still be only half-heartedly approaching my therapy sessions. Bad things have happend in my life but I no longer look at them as curses but rather as blessings. My past does not define me, it only shapes me. And my past doesn't hold me captive any more. It has set me free. I truly hope that everyone out there can find this truth about life in their own personal life because there is nothing better than this feeling I carry with me now. I am better for all the mistakes I have made and the bad choices I have chosen and the sins I have committed. And I wouldn't change a thing about any of it because everything I have gone through has made me the person I am today. And I happen to love and accept that person.