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I'm going to be ok. It can make a person feel guilty to discover that they're going to be ok. Wouldn't it be so much more right to die of a broken heart?
I was really only at the point where I could go on a date and start talking about intimate things. I was only really about at the point of making out in the back seat.
I wasn't ready to be the person who was committed to the rest of my life. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it was that the relationship hadn't progressed to that point.
Are you listening, Stan?
This is the whole thing, really, it's not the other people in my life, or all the stuff about you or me that either of us think is fucked up.
In terms of really knowing each other, real intimacy, not the intensity and the sneaking around and the romantic wishful-thinking, I really felt like I was at that level where I was talking to you in the Huddle House over the whipped cream can about your father. It was the first time I felt like I'd really known anything about the real you. It was worth the effort to make the connection. If the other shit hadn't been there, if we hadn't been fighting for months about promiscuity, Mark, pictures... I would have been happy to go on with the relationship from ~that~ point.
But you weren't going to change your life until I was ready to move in with you.
Maybe in 13 years.
I'm sad, but I'm not angry anymore. Well, I'm angry, but not at me, not at you, not at God. The anger is in the process of being accepted for the frustration of effort that it is... and the actual results, well, they're not as bad as I thought. They're worth something. I know who I am. I haven't given up on me. I still believe there's such a thing as True Love. I still believe God loves me. I have passed through a great doorway in my life. Nothing will ever be the same.
I was told, that when one's behavior is being continually directed by negative reinforcement, that is abuse.
The book "There is Nothing Wrong with You" presents letting go of self-hatred as a utilitarian idea. You'll feel better, be able to get more done, do the things you think you ought, if you think this way. If you don't get more out of life from liking yourself, you can go right back to hating yourself.
So, we don't need to take this abuse from people. We're right there, in our head, abusing ourselves, negatively reinforcing our behavior minute to minute, day to day. This seems to indicate that the trick is to encourage oneself, to give oneself permission to fail, to mess up, to detach from oneself, and look at oneself with compassion, to say, you're doing ok, you'll get there eventually, you don't have to get it right the first time.
I'm doing ok. I have learned SO much. I know that there will be new things to learn, new lessons to grow through, new expectations, failures, pain...
But right now, I'm having the triumph. I just won the Superbowl. I'm going to Disneyland.
I was really only at the point where I could go on a date and start talking about intimate things. I was only really about at the point of making out in the back seat.
I wasn't ready to be the person who was committed to the rest of my life. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it was that the relationship hadn't progressed to that point.
Are you listening, Stan?
This is the whole thing, really, it's not the other people in my life, or all the stuff about you or me that either of us think is fucked up.
In terms of really knowing each other, real intimacy, not the intensity and the sneaking around and the romantic wishful-thinking, I really felt like I was at that level where I was talking to you in the Huddle House over the whipped cream can about your father. It was the first time I felt like I'd really known anything about the real you. It was worth the effort to make the connection. If the other shit hadn't been there, if we hadn't been fighting for months about promiscuity, Mark, pictures... I would have been happy to go on with the relationship from ~that~ point.
But you weren't going to change your life until I was ready to move in with you.
Maybe in 13 years.
I'm sad, but I'm not angry anymore. Well, I'm angry, but not at me, not at you, not at God. The anger is in the process of being accepted for the frustration of effort that it is... and the actual results, well, they're not as bad as I thought. They're worth something. I know who I am. I haven't given up on me. I still believe there's such a thing as True Love. I still believe God loves me. I have passed through a great doorway in my life. Nothing will ever be the same.
I was told, that when one's behavior is being continually directed by negative reinforcement, that is abuse.
The book "There is Nothing Wrong with You" presents letting go of self-hatred as a utilitarian idea. You'll feel better, be able to get more done, do the things you think you ought, if you think this way. If you don't get more out of life from liking yourself, you can go right back to hating yourself.
So, we don't need to take this abuse from people. We're right there, in our head, abusing ourselves, negatively reinforcing our behavior minute to minute, day to day. This seems to indicate that the trick is to encourage oneself, to give oneself permission to fail, to mess up, to detach from oneself, and look at oneself with compassion, to say, you're doing ok, you'll get there eventually, you don't have to get it right the first time.
I'm doing ok. I have learned SO much. I know that there will be new things to learn, new lessons to grow through, new expectations, failures, pain...
But right now, I'm having the triumph. I just won the Superbowl. I'm going to Disneyland.
