Welcome To The Shit Show

Post break up Gale

bon:

Sweetie, I'm sorry, but you have to get to know that person. If this person you apparently detest on every level just occasionally hijacks your body and does something awful, your understanding of how and when and why that happens is essential to your ability to promise anyone else that they won't be on the receiving end of that.

It might sound a little backward, that the key to avoiding destructive behaviour is not forcibly repressing that detestable energy inside yourself. You can deny those feelings and force them into exile, but they're going to come back and take over sometime in the future when your defences are down.

If self-loathing actually got shit done, I'd still be in favour of it. Unfortunately, it's only good at satisfying emotions in the short run, so you can really feel like you're putting in serious effort. It's not a winning strategy if you want to genuinely change your behaviour or thought patterns or emotional responses.

Self-reflection is not supposed to be a lesson in flagellating yourself. It is more brutal and gentler, because it rakes over the twisted shards of what happened in your mind with the dispassion of an engineer assessing a bridge collapse and says, "What really happened here? How can we prevent it from happening again in the future?"

It's possible to get to know your shadow, but not be consumed by it. You could eventually feel able to turn over the rocks in your brain, and catalogue and understand all the things squirming beneath. The shame won't kill you.

We all want to reap the benefits (having a friend circle, having a partner, getting married) without doing the work (going to events, interacting with people, learning to handle conflict maturely, dating). Myself included. If I could, I'd never leave the house or go on another mediocre date again... except, that's part of the process.