Day 250: Appearances

05062013

I have recently made a new friend in the company of whom I accept and allow myself to see myself in self-honesty. I have noticed this because people like this are extremely rare in my life, and while traveling I have mostly just been keeping up an appearance with the new people I've met. In the company of this person, however, I have been seeing myself in a “new light” as we have discussed our lives very openly and I have seen my appearance “cracking”, as if I was just getting a glimpse of myself underneath who I believe myself to be.

I noticed a new kind of a worry concerning this today: I fear that our interaction will regress, that we will return to our appearances and lose this level of communication that has been very helpful to me. At the same time I realize that I would very much like to crawl back behind my masks because I fear what this kind of interaction might reveal of myself. A window of opportunity like this should not be dismissed, and that's why I need self-forgiveness to support and assist myself to seize it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to keep up appearances with the people I meet and spend time with because I have wanted to enjoy myself, “have fun” and live a smooth life of no conflict, not realizing that by living as an appearance I am not really here and that I am thus dishonest in everything I do or say, making the interaction with others superficial, shallow and a facade, like actors in a play who believe themselves to be the illusion they portray.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to keep up appearances with others because I have been afraid to face myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by keeping up appearances I support others to do the same and thus am more likely to only interact with appearances, characters and personalities instead of the actual people behind them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the appearances others keep up by not looking at who they actually are (or might be) within their actions and by not questioning their appearances because I have been afraid of conflict and loneliness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to keep up appearances because I have wanted to socialize and have friends and have believed and perceived that I have to be a certain kind of a personality to gain acceptance from others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in order to gain acceptance and friendship from others I need to be ignorant of who others actually are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in order to gain acceptance and friendship from others I need to ignore and hide myself underneath a likeable appearance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when and as I give others only an appearance of myself and not my real self, as ugly as it is, the friendship I receive in return is just as fake as who I am within it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that the quality of the friendship is determined by how I live within it – I get what I give – and that in order to have constructive relations with others I need to get down to what is real, to what is actually HERE as the fuck-up that I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like I have been regressing back to my personalities when my conversation with X turned back to superficial things after having been about our actual living.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with self-judgement when and as I noticed myself regressing back to my “sociable personality” instead of stopping, breathing and directing myself out of this personality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for comfort and stability from my “sociable personality” when and as the conversation has reached a point where I have had nothing to say as I have felt uncomfortable about having nothing to say thinking I should be saying something.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the moments in interaction with others when I have nothing to say, believing and perceiving that another will judge me and think I am not good enough company, not realizing that I do not know what actually causes a line of conversation to “die out” and that whatever the cause I am not alone responsible for an interaction that involves someone in addition to myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself when and as a line of conversation has “died out”, blaming myself for this and making this a point of self-diminishment, when in fact it is no big deal if a conversation ends because then another form of interaction may take place.

[I was unable to finish this text at the time, but I will return to this subject shortly.]