Guilt and failure

[fuchs]

I fear I'll never be able to stop feeling guilty about leaving my little sister. Sometimes I miss her so much it hurts.
She just called me, I think she just wanted to talk, to contact me, to feel a little nearer. She asked stupid questions about the cd's I sent her, and she didn't even have the time to talk properly, because Dad just made lunch. I told her she could ask anything she wanted to, but she should know what she wanted to know before asking. I told her she could call me anytime just for talking.
So she apologised profusely and her voice suddenly sounded so strained. Embarassed perhaps. Longing.
God, I love her.
I wish I could just be there for her AND live my own life. I wish she could be totally happy and secure without me.

I wish I could forget all the failures in my life. I still remember most of those small embarassements, bad grades and humiliations. I don't want to think about friends who let me down, I want to forget the feeling of knowing that you just made such a major fool of yourself.
I don't want to contemplate my past self. I want to lose the burden of past wrong decisions and lacks of awareness.
It churns in my stomach to think about how I often didn't even recognize I've been humiliated by false friends and people I wouldn't have suspected. So naive. So dumb.

Sometimes I ponder if it would do any good to write them all down, failures, humiliations, bad memories. To put them in a small black book. I don't know, and then burn it, perhaps. Lay the regrets to rest. Bury the churning.
But writing something down lends things a greater amount of reality. Wouldn't I just remember them better, afterwards? Wouldn't I create a sort of canon of failures to be thought about everytime I remember a part of it?
I even thought of a ritual to invent and celebrate to rid myself of all of them. Some kind of psychological little helper. A placebo fo my soul.
I'll watch this, and perhaps I'll burn a little black book on the next significant pagan holiday, winter solstice.

Comments

[damanique.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's a good thing to remember all of the things that went wrong in your past, all of the people who hurt you, all of the mistakes you made...

I've done that, and now I'm stuck. Whenever something happens, I fall back upon the past, trying to find a solution there. But it's useless. Scars from the past made you who you are today, but they can't change you anymore. I'm somehow unable to make real changes because I'm still stuck in the past, still blaming everyone who hurt me and blaming myself for letting them do so. I don't know any other way to think, I haven't learned one, yet.

I think it's much better to leave the past where it is - behind ya. ^^ Remembering it better does not change what happened. Just think about today and tomorrow.. the past is done with.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

That sounds like an good way to deal with such unpleasant memories. The process of reflecting on them and writing them all down is probably going to be a painful one, but that'll probably make the relief after burning or burying them once and for all all the more powerful. Good luck!

And *hugs* I'm so sorry you can't be there for your sister as much as you want. No easy way or good advice on how to deal with that, I'm afraid...

[faelkchen.livejournal.com]

Ich kenne das Gefühl, ich schleppe auch zu viel mit mir herum, ohne zu wissen, wie und wo ich es loswerden könnte. Vielleicht hilft es ja wirklich, alles mal aufzuschreiben und dann zu vernichten - und unter Umständen ist es gerade die Tatsache, daß Du diese Dinge mit dem Aufschreiben "realer" werden läßt, die das anschließende Vernichten noch wirksamer macht. Ich wünsche es Dir zumindest. *knuddel*

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

Bekanntermaßen bin ich nicht gut im geben guter Ratschläge, aber ich weiß nicht, ob das mit dem kleinen schwarzen Buch ausreicht. Es kann bestimmt als Übergangsritual ganz gut helfen, aber Fehlschläge, Demütigungen und Dummheiten passieren einem immer wieder - ein "ab heute nicht mehr", wie man, was weiß ich, mit dem Rauchen aufhören kann, gibt es dabei nicht, selbst, wenn man erwachsener, reifer, mißtrauischer geworden ist. Auf die Dauer wäre es vielleicht besser, keine klare Linie zwischen dem "past self" und dem jetzigen Ich zu ziehen, sondern irgendeinen Weg zu finden, sich trotz aller Fehlschläge so zu akzeptieren, wie man ist, und letztlich auch den Weg, auf dem man zu dem Punkt, an dem man nun steht, gekommen ist, zu akzeptieren, so unerfreulich er vielleicht auch gewesen sein mag, ohne zu viel Reue und zu viel "was wäre gewesen wenn?" Es ist nicht leicht, aber auf die Dauer vielleicht... nachhaltiger, als alles Gewesene auf den Müll zu werfen und ein weißes Blatt hervorzuholen. Denn was tun, wenn das auch Flecke abbekommt? Wieder alles in den Müll, wieder alles neu?

Was deine kleine Schwester betrifft - es ist schön, daß du dich verantwortlich fühlst, aber es hilft ihr bestimmt doch schon ein Stück, wenn sie weiß, daß sie sich trotz der räumlichen Distanz immer bei dir melden kann; und immerhin hast du schon einiges für sie getan und mit dazu beigetragen, daß es ihr nicht noch schlechter geht.

[al-pha.livejournal.com]

*BIG hug*
Henny knows that you are there for her and care. And she will become more selbständiger within the years. Hm.
About past: Writing all that down wouldn´t work for me, cause than I would also remember the list (length... people on it..). I started to recognize patterns and just began to try to brake them. Most of them are related to the past. I don´t know, how you can stop yourself remembering. Maybe one way could be to use some of it in your writing (and let it end a better way perhaps). Don´t know.
I would have to say a lot more to that, but thats better done personal and after my historical mo/ tue. Sorry.

[vout.livejournal.com]

*hugs Fuchs*

I find relief of bad memories when I tell them to someone (well, Kira) I can trust.