Originally Posted by holdingontoit
LA:

I went downstairs. Found the book. Read a little. Saw some of the exercises. Which required me to remember good feelings.

And I put the book down. And walked away. I chose to lie to myself. To continue the lie. That I do not have any good feelings to remember. That this won't work for me because it assumes the presence of life experiences I never had. Which is another lie. They are few and far between. But they exist.

Perhaps some day I will choose differently. Stop lying. And do the hard, painful work to heal. Maybe some day. But not today.

Today, I will yet again wallow in self pity. And choose the comfortable familiar pain. Over the terrifying unknown of change.

Today, I will continue to lie to my children. Continue to send the strong message that their love is not enough. That the good times and good feelings we seem to share are not real.

And I will continue to lie to my wife. The multiple embedded lies. That I love her. That I don't. That she isn't enough. That she is. That her alleged deficiencies don't matter. That they do. That I am so withdrawn that she can't affect me. That she is so powerful that she can.

And I will lie to myself. That there is no cure for how I feel. Or that I am not capable of implementing the cure.

I am awash in love. And yet I tell myself that I am both unlovable and unloved. Both lies. Both my most cherished and closely held inner truths. I wonder if I will ever let go and accept that perhaps these truths I hold so dear are not self-evident. Perhaps it is finally becoming clear what I hold onto so desperately.

And you all thought it was just a bad double entendre. wink


Hi Hold! Merry almost Christmas/Happy Hanukkah.

This may seem like a weird comment, and indeed it may be, but...your post above reminds me of a recent novel I read on my Kindle. It was free, I may have passed by it otherwise. It was about a young woman in a town, emotionally and physically abused, thus diseased and perhaps possessed who seemed to be the crux of all the bad things happening. Shot off into the horror genre...but, point I'm trying to make...although the writing was intelligent and laced appropriately with feelings, it went too far into poetic wishy-washiness. "Suddenly, she clearly saw it all. [for the 200th time in the story] She was the beginning. She was the end. It was the same. It was so very different. She really saw. And still, she saw nothing. It had been her all along. It had never been her." Through the entire story, I was like, so make up your mind already!

smile

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.