Theme of the Week, #82–Emotion

If I could remove any emotion, I would remove guilt.  Being the kid of an alcoholic father and a bipolar mother, I was handed a set of coping skills that has always been less than stellar.  And I never really thought about how those shitty skills had affected me until later in life.  Since then, I’ve learned about Adult Children of Alcoholics and how universal our pain is.  There is a whole set of behaviors and feelings we all have and sometimes those are really confusing.  I often struggle with guilt and regret that I never truly express.  Sometimes it’s about major fuckups I’ve done in life.  Sometimes its little things I did forty years ago, things I had no real control over and really didn’t understand at the time.  I will think about these things over and over, wishing I could just forget them.  But I’ve been “blessed” with a good sense of mental/emotional recall and this stuff just never seems to leave me.  Yes, I have been talking to somebody professionally about this for the last few years and that has helped somewhat.  I feel like I don’t get stuck on these things as much anymore, but it still happens from time to time.  And I know that all I can do is just try to be a better person day in and day out and do my penance whenever I can.  Still, there are days I wish I could just wipe the dry erase board of my mind clean and start all over from scratch knowing what I know now.  I dunno.  Maybe everybody feels that way inside from time to time.