Winter Blahs?
CONFESSIONAL
have been feeling a little inadequate days. not sure what brought it on- teachers college application forms, the weather- but mind has been filled with memories of shame and regret. Especially at night. Here is a random assortment of the kinds of thoughts that have been tormenting me lately:
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- grade 12 religion class. group presentation on the sacrament of marriage. Mr. P asked me how long a catholic’s engagement has to be before you can get married. I dont know. Mr. P frowns. J, another group member, answers correctly.
- age 16/17. D calls to book me as sitter for his kids so he can take his wife out for surprise birthday dinner. on day of dinner i forget and am in karate class when dad shows up to get me. i make feeble apology to D when i arrive late. he is clearly upset.
- another time while babysitting for D I am going through bracelet weaving phase and bring stuff to work on while kids play. they ask me to make one for them. I say ok but parents come home and I run outta time. next day the kids call to ask for bracelet and i promise to mail it to them. never did.
- grade 11 math. S asks me to tutor him in math at lunch. this is confusing as he is doing fine in class and i am less than confident in my own math skills. we make plans to meet in the library. he does not show up. over the next little while S repeats his request and he/I occassionally do meet at library for lame/awkward sessions.
- last summer, went to a party at friend’s home. didnt know any of her guests very well. feel like i made an ass of myself. talked too much, laughed too loudly, hugged someone i didnt know.
December 8th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Sometimes when I’m going through that sort of nostalgic-overly-neurotic-melancholy-recall the feelings of shame and/or guilt are so intense that I have to physically shake myself out of the recollection and reground myself the present moment. I think it’s a sign of retardation; I was, after all, born with 6 fingers and a defective heart. You should get that checked out.
hahahaha. yeah, alot of times the memories are fleeting but the emotional impact is severe. i go through this routine where i’ll have the memory, feel bad, forget why i was feeling bad, force myself to think back and remember what made me feel bad, recall the memory, realize the triviality of it, feel loads better, move on. its like a mental lapse. but i seem to have hit a wave of them lately.
December 8th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
I always struggle between attempting to forget versus attempting to embrace these nauseating moments. Originally I tended to go with the much less depressing strategy of quickly averting my attention before the full realization of my past retardedness sets in… but lately I’ve been allowing the full experience to unload unto my psyche. I began to do this to punish myself for my indiscretions… but now I find that it makes those awful moments more bearable… unfortunately I think that I might have in avertedly become too comfortable with them, because in the past couple of months they only seem to be piling on!
December 10th, 2005 at 11:08 pm
There was some new age type book where you had these imaginary conversations with the people from such incidents and you could forgive them, or them you and it was like a closure exercise… or exorcism. Wish I could remember the name of the book. I did it, and it was terrible reliving the experiences, but in the end, it kinda worked.