I was writing self forgiveness today about the event that happened years ago while I was in grammar school. A lot of new points opened up immediately. It was something like that:
When I was in grammar school (and also it was the same at high school) I created this personality of a “good girl”. I was pretending in front of teachers that I am poor little girl, helpless, good, innocent etc. And I did this because I believed that I can manipulate them through that kind of personality more effectively. So I tried to have the best grades, “be a good student”, although I want to get good grades with the smallest effort as I could. Meaning: getting good grades because teachers like me and not because I deserved good grades through knowledge. Also this kind of personality was connected with my mother, trying to prove myself to her so she could be proud. Good grades = likable to teachers = proud mother. But I was just pretending to be a “good student”, I didn’t study at home at all or just a little bit with small amount of effort and I reached a point when this wasn’t working in my advantage any more. So I started to skip classes when probability appeared that I could be questioned in front of the whole class (here a point opened up – I was scared to be questioned in front of my classmates, because I was afraid that they are going to laugh at me because I don’t know something which is considered as general knowledge), because I didn’t want to ruin my “reputation” as a “good girl”. This started to happen very often (because I was lazy at home and I find it as a good way to not face with my responsibilities). I absent even for a whole week so it wouldn’t get so suspicious (like I made it look like I was ill). And my parents of course didn’t know about that. I even wrote (forge) apology letter with fake signature from my father so they thought that I was really sick and I didn’t get any penalty for that. But eventually it went out of control. I was missing at school all the time, I didn’t study at home, I didn’t do anything to correct my actions, so they caught me (it got suspicious and my teacher called my mom and asked her about my missing and she didn’t know anything about that). When I found out that she knows and that also teacher knows about me skipping classes I panicked because if they knew about me being “bad girl” it would ruin everything (no more manipulating and pretending). And instead of taking responsibility for my actions I played the game further and told my teacher that I was doing this because my father was drunk all the time and I couldn’t study and concentrate when he was like that and I was afraid to get bad grade in school so I rather skip class (he drank at that time a lot but it wasn’t his fault that I did what I did – I simply didn’t want to take responsibility for myself and I put guilt on him because it was easier and also I could then manipulate again). So I pretend that I am innocent lamb and my father was a bad wolf.
So while writing self forgiveness about that I felt a lot of guilt within myself, also blaming myself not taking responsibility for my actions, a lot of anger, disappointment and regret.
Now I see that I did all of that because of self interest not considering the consequences and also I played a victim because I didn’t want to take responsibility.
Oh, and here are some new points that I will be working on that opened up while writing this down:
• my father and alcohol
• lying and pretending
• self trust
