Using the past to stop the future

People do it all the time. They use past behavior or wrongs done to them to stop them from being who they could be. Some past wrongs are much worse and more crippling than others. I am talking about being dumped or used by people.

My latest realization is that I have tried very hard to shed me. I have spent years trying to be someone else. Many people do this. We all do it to some extent. Well, except those people that are just amazingly well-adjusted. As I get older, I want to rediscover who I really am. I want to stop who I think I should be and just start being.

In conjunction with the shedding process, I have also continually punished myself. Oh, I have made numerous mistakes and I have hurt people. There are a few people and what I did that I still can't think of without immense shame. But somewhere, we should forgive ourselves. Learn from what we have done, find the reasons we did the things that we did. The one huge mistake that haunts me 20 years later is that I cheated on someone that I loved very much. Because of this incident, for years I let other people take advantage of me and use me. I assumed that I was a bad person and should be treated poorly. To this day, I wish I could take back all of the hurt that I caused. But now I see a couple of people that were really bad at a relationship. He shut me out because he didn't know how to deal with me neediness. I started seeing someone else to compensate for the lack of contact. I have attempted, over the years to deal with my past. I still hate my actions and, on some days, myself. I am trying not to hate myself any more. I am not a bad person. That teenager wasn't a bad person. He wasn't a bad person. We were simply two screwed up people that had no idea how to talk to each other. I still can't write this without hearing that voice in my head that I AM a bad person. That I should be punished.

I have used this and other incidents in my past to stop my future. I slowly withdrew, using my career as an excuse. But part of it was always the need to punish or to not let anyone else see me. And now, I am tired of using the past. Yes, I have done things that hurt people. Just as I have been hurt by others. But I am going to stop letting it get in the way of making friends or doing the things I want to do.

The really nice thing about being almost 40. I can look like a dork. It's allowed.