Published on 12, July, 2020
I feel I've gone nuclear with this over the last few months. I've made lots of mistakes in my life and blown every opportunity I've ever had.
I have had people tell me that it's not actually helping me, but the truth is I almost enjoy it. It's the one thing in my life at the moment I feel I have control over in a way. Also, I am rather used to ending up with egg on my face if I try and be positive, because I don't want to go to that extreme of confusing confidence with cockiness.
However, I'm all too comfortable with going to the other extreme of convincing myself that the world hates me and will always hate me, and that I am a worse person than Hitler. If you asked me why I think that, I would probably be able to rattle off reasons why I believe that to be the case.
Anyone saying "you need to move on" doesn't help. Anyone telling me that they're proud of me or that they believe in me doesn't help either because I don't know if they're being honest or just kind.
It's not been a happy time. There's already been the "who'd miss me when I'm gone" but now it's ramped up to 100.
One thing I’ve learned in life is that other people - especially those who only “know” us via social media - rarely have the interest, energy or attention span to think enough about us to actively hate us and even if they did, they’re just anonymous people on the internet who have a very two dimensional knowledge of who we really are. Their opinions really have no value.
So you may well feel alone and unloved - and I can really sympathise with that - but nobody that matters hates you - except perhaps yourself.
You need to forgive yourself for whatever transgressions you have made and move on, because you can’t change the past.
That's fair. I'd find it hard to actively hate another individual because of the amount of energy that would take out of me, plus it would probably imply that I do still care about them to some degree.
I think what gets me is this general 'domino effect', and I've seen it happen to loads of people. Something will be said about an individual (true or not) and that's taken as gospel. No grace given to them at all.
The forgiving myself is something I'm finding hard because I don't feel strong enough to stand on my own two feet and say "this is who I am now, and it's not the same person I was a year ago" because I don't think anyone wants to hear it. The internet has this general sense of "this person made a mistake and therefore they should be wiped off the face of the earth" and I know it's not like that in real life, but it's (sadly) a very powerful movement.