Remember my post about fish mania? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about where my disgust for that kind of thing comes from, and I think it comes from a sense of deep personal shame and an inability to forgive myself for pretty much anything.
I came to this because I was washing the dishes or something equally banal, beating myself up for something stupid I said or did many years ago, when I suddenly thought, “why am I still thinking about this now?” I mean, I know that I dwell on a lot of stuff because I’m embarrassed by or ashamed of whatever it was I happen to be dwelling on at any given moment, but why do I dwell in the first place? Why hate myself for insignificant things from years, even decades ago?
Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for that question. I’m not sure why I can’t forgive myself for even the silliest missteps — harmless goofy typical 7-yr old kid behaviour like making dumb jokes or trying to impress other kids with how fast I could run, I can’t accept it. I hate it, I’m unspeakably ashamed of it. I have so many memories of normal kid stuff that I wish I could either forget or accept because as it is, it’s torturous. And of course there are mountains of adult regrets too, most of them just as silly as the kid stuff — “why did I choose that particular word when I spoke to that stranger who I’ll never see again?” That sort of thing. Sure, there are a handful of legitimate regrets but the vast majority are about as ridiculous as the childhood stuff.
I wonder if I need to figure out the why before I can fix this. Couldn’t I theoretically just say, “despite not knowing the origin of this behaviour, I recognize it is a bad habit like biting my nails so I’m going to stop myself when I do it, just like I did with biting my nails”? It seems like that should work. I think it will take an almost constant self-awareness to break this habit but it should be do-able.
Huh. I wonder if a habit is all it is. That would be a funny, absurdly simple origin for all of this.
crimson highway 