Forgiving myself.

Sometimes I think I'm a bitch. I am not my best friend. I condemn myself. I wonder why I'm so difficult. I wonder how I can forgive others for their shortcomings and then be so upset with myself. It seems unfair.

I think about Old Me. The Me from years ago. The wide-eyed Me. The hopeful Me. The Me who thought everything was in my control. The Me who thought love conquered all. The Me who always thought things would work out in the end.  The naive Me.

Well, it's not the end, right? I'm about to get deep here, but is it ever the end? Is there ever really a finite end to things? There's always something from something else. No thing just comes out of thin air and no thing just disappears into nothing.

So maybe things (life) will work out eventually. Maybe the Old Me wasn't so wrong. Or maybe it just doesn't matter.

My heart really aches these days. I'm a fighter and I'm strong, but sometimes being strong is hard. Ending a relationship with someone you love is hard. Losing a parent is hard. Losing a gland in your body due to a cancer scare is hard, too. (I've been having weird thyroidectomy remorse. It's really bizarre.)

When I feel uncomfortable emotions (such as jealousy, anxiety, anger, annoyance. . .) and then feel guilty about feeling those already uncomfortable emotions, I have to remind myself to take a step back. Instead of thinking about what others may say or think about my decisions, I focus on the truth:

I'm really doing the best I can and I'm only human.

In order for us to truly practice kindness and gentleness with others, we must practice those traits with ourselves. We must forgive ourselves. We must be our own best friends.

"Experience: the most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn." - C.S. Lewis