Both… totally useless. But how does one overcome them?
This is not an instructional post. I have no fucking idea how to overcome them. I can tell you how they overcome me, though.
I hold onto guilt and regret for-fucking-ever. I could start with my earliest memories and list my regrets… my feelings of guilt… for every stage of my life. Yeah, I even have regrets from when I was six years old. I shouldn’t have thrown that grilled cheese sandwich at my sister no matter how mean she was to me.
But no one needs to hear all the things about which I’m buried in guilt and regret. Just know that I am and we can move on.
Well, you can move on. Clearly I can’t, thus my dilemma.
I cannot change the past. [Insert 14 clichés that say the same thing here. But really, don’t because I hate that. *insert tongue-sticking-out face here*] I need to stop living there… revisiting there… vacationing there… slipping back there. I need to fucking stop.
How do I do that?
I legit cannot get some of that shit out of my head. Distractions — people, projects, books, writing, shopping, walking, yelling, throwing things… none of these things kill the guilt and regret. Those useless fuckers scream at me still.
This morning, I had a revelation that brought me perhaps the biggest onslaught of guilt and regret I’ve ever felt. It has been repeating in my head ever since. I have had two people already tell me that it’s not true. [One was even my husband! Imagine that! The other was a professional…] But… it gnaws at me. If that were literal, I’d have, like, no arm now. It would have been gnawed off. Now I’m just being gross.
I try to inject humor into posts like this. I think it’s my way of telling you that even though there’s a serious matter at hand, I’m not curled up in a ball in my closet rocking back and forth repeating the word regrets over and over again.
No… I’m curled up somewhere else.
No… I’m just kidding. I’m on the couch. Sitting upright.
And I’m wondering…
Will I ever get to this place:
Well, I hope not because spelling errors piss me the fuck off. But I’ll take that Milky Way.
©2017 what sandra thinks
what sandra thinks 
I have no answers, but wanted to say I feel for you. ♥
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Thank you. ♥ I know there are really no answers… and even if there were, they’d be different for everyone, I think. Sometimes, I just feel overwhelmed…
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♥
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Dammit!!! Now I’m craving candy again!
Ice Bear agrees.
I wish I had an answer for ya’. Guilt sucks. Regret is worse. Just know you’ve got friends, a bunch that likely know exactly what you mean. I’m certainly glad to hear that you aren’t curled up in ball.
I wonder though, if maybe it’s just part of the human condition. Oh, and Catholic school. Oh, and our moms. 😊😊
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Ice Bear wants Milky Way.
I don’t think there’s an answer… I think that’s why the usual response is just to say that they are useless emotions… and hopefully knowing that they’re useless will make them go away. It doesn’t, of course, but there’s no other answer.
I didn’t go to Catholic school, so that one’s out. Mom’s pretty awesome, too, so… maybe I was just born with it. That seems to be the case with a lot of things I struggle to change in myself…
I’m going to go curl up in a ball now.
(kidding) 🙂
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I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. But, if you can identify it, when it’s happening, you then can take control of it. Own it, whatever “it” was, apologize to the universe, then move on. If it’s something that can’t be changed or rectified, why let it continue to weigh you down?
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Right. It’s pointless for me to let it continue to eat away at me… yet somehow it does… all that ‘what if’ and ‘should have’ crap! Hate it!
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It sucks, fo’ sho’. Just keep sitting upright and out of the corner. 😊
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❤
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🙂 ♥
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Ugh I do this, too. It’s awful and it is useless but I can’t help it either. I always see it as forks in the road with all my bad choices leading away from my ‘perfect’ life. Which is ridiculous because there are no guarantees anything would have worked out better but I’m still convinced it would have. This is not helping. I’m sorry. 😖
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It’s okay… I know you understand. And you’re right… there’s no guarantee anything would be any different right now even if I had made those ‘better’ or ‘right’ choices. *sigh* There’s really no answer here… I just wish I could get the guilt and regret to stop screaming at me in my head.
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I feel you. But I’m trying to “motivate”myself out of that…hence my planned blog repost for tomorrow! 😐
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I will look for it and read! 🙂
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Well this hit me right in the feels. I’m the exact same way. I just started a mindfulness/self-compassion/meditation course that promised (well, the flier promised) to help me develop strategies for working through negative feelings like the ones you’ve described here. Fingers crossed! If you can stomach the touchy-feely emotional stuff, it might be worth looking into!
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I am honestly not sure I can stomach the touchy-feely parts… but who knows? 🙂 It’s funny… For some reason the word “mindfulness” always makes me cringe. I don’t know why. The course you mention… or something like it… seems to work for some people. Best to you. I’d be interested to know how it goes…
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Well I’m already annoyed with the facilitator and her slowww measureddd speech patterns so that’s not too great of a sign 😉
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I kind of think in that role, anyone would be like that… maybe. You know, all mellow and such… 🙂
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I love the humor you incorporated in this. And I can relate. But my festering regrets are usually something that are from embarrassment. I can’t stand to know that others may have a ridiculous memory of me. Know what I mean?
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I find that humor is completely necessary! And I know exactly what you mean about the embarrassment. I hate thinking about the memories people in my life must have of me. It’s pretty horrifying.
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