Guilt

I really don’t write often enough; I haven’t written since July. I’m going to try to be better about that, since it really does help. This post is kind of rambling, but it helped me to write it. I actually wrote it yesterday and, though I’m feeling much better today (thanks to having written this and having a good talk with Ann), I’m posting it now.

Lately, I’ve felt a lot of guilt about my addiction (specifically about what I’ve done). It’s odd, I think, since I haven’t “acted out” for quite a while now and I’ve done my best to apologize to my wife, Ann, and to various friends that my addiction affected in less direct ways. I’ve also tried (and am continuing to work on) making amends with these people, particularly my wife. Sometimes I still get tempted to act out, particularly after anything that I’ve built up in my head, such as the holidays (my post-holiday stress-level this year was about the same as last year, but it didn’t seem to last as long, which is good), but I seem to have gotten better at getting through the times when I’m tempted by talking to Ann and by simply realizing that I’ve been through this before (that really helps). Sometimes that’s easier than others, but so far so good.

I think my guilt stems from the fact that I hurt the person that I love the most: my wife. It hurts me to know that I am capable of causing her so much pain. All I want to do is make her life easier, and I feel like I’ve done nothing but make it harder. I know that isn’t true (and she has reassured me of that), but it’s how I feel sometimes. She is the most amazing person; I truly believe that she is my soul mate.

I know that I really am a good person (though I sometimes feel otherwise – admittedly less often than I once did), but I also know that I have cheated (not in the “actual sex with another person” sense, since I thankfully never did that, but in the emotional sense). It’s just hard for me to reconcile that with who I know I am. I imagine that’s kind of the same reconciliation that Ann had difficulty with at first. She has forgiven me, but I can’t seem to forgive myself. I don’t know if I ever can, but I hope that someday I will be able to. I want to. Most of the time, I feel okay about myself, but sometimes I get really down on myself. I wonder sometimes if I even should be able to forgive myself. I’m not talking about excusing my actions, as there is no excuse; I’m talking about forgiveness. I don’t know if I deserve it. Most of the time, I think that I do and that it will come, but sometimes I don’t know.

Something interesting is that I think these feelings of guilt are, in some ways, replacing acting out as my coping mechanism for stress. I’ve found that these feelings tend to come up when I’m worried or concerned about something else. Lately, I’ve been thinking about a lot of the choices I’ve made, not directly related to my addiction or to Ann — things like my career, what I studied in school, etc., and I’ve been feeling guilty as a means of avoiding dealing with these real issues. I’ve recognized that my feelings of guilt intensify when I’m thinking about other things, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction. That’s definitely a difference from what I used to do.

I read something recently which said that actions can (and often do) define beliefs. For instance, one can begin to think of oneself as “bad” if one engages in actions that are contrary to one’s morals/values; conversely, one can begin to think of oneself as “good” if one consistently acts in accordance with those morals/values, even if there is no conscious choice to live act that way. It seems like beliefs should define actions (and that can happen too), but I had never thought of it this way before. This is definitely something that I have done (my actions did not reflect my morals, and I felt like I was bad because of it…this became a self-perpetuating cycle). Maybe if I live in accordance with my morals and values for long enough, I might just start to believe that I’m a good person. I hope so. It might be easier to forgive a good person who has made some mistakes than to forgive someone that I still think of as bad.

I love you, Ann. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for being in my life and for not giving up on me.