guilt

guilt. 

we all have it. we all claim that it's not worth having. we all want to be rid of it. and we all have it anyway. 

“Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.” 
― Veronica Roth

guilt can be used as a means to get yourself to do something that you don't want to be do. it can be used to remind us of what we can improve upon. there is always something that could be better - something that could have been done better. 

"There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” 
― Bill Watterson

today nosy nora absolved me of my guilt over something small and huge that i did. it doesn't matter what i did or didn't do. the point is that it took someone else telling me that it's okay. it took someone else to forgive me before i could forgive myself. maybe that's why confession is so important. maybe we need to have someone forgive us so that we can do the work required to forgive ourselves. 

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.” 
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

guilt can eat you up. in an attempt to prevent the world from knowing what you feel guilty about, you often show your cards. we can't keep secrets forever. we have to tell someone. no matter how guilty we feel. no matter how shameful the secret is. 

there is a difference between shame and guilt. 

shame is a deep feeling of unworthiness, whereas guilt is a regret for something we have done. they are not the same thing. yet, you can feel both guilt and shame about the same event. 

“Sometimes I just want to paint the words "It's my fault" across my forehead to save people the time of being pissed off at me.” 
― Christina Westover

sometimes we have so much guilt that it is easier to just walk around apologizing for everything despite whose fault it is. there are times i feel so guilty for something that someone else did that it crushes me. 

“Guilt isn't always a rational thing, Clio realized. Guilt is a weight that will crush you whether you deserve it or not.” 
― Maureen Johnson

guilt is crushing. it just is. 

“I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.” 
― Rosamund Lupton

we can't walk away from our guilt. it follows us throughout life and throughout time. and the only way to get out from under guilt is to forgive. i don't mean rationalize, i mean truly forgive. 

when i was 18, i was working at the school library. on the last day before the christmas holidays, a grade 9 boy found a wallet and turned it in to me. i then turned it in to the office. it had over $2000 in it. the gentleman who had lost the wallet, right before christmas, was so impressed and grateful, that i was given a monetary reward. my friend gigi said that i shouldn't keep the money because it was the young boy who found the wallet and turned it in. 

i kept the money. 

it has been 18 years and i still think about that. i still wish that i could find that man, and give him the money and apologize for keeping it. 

i had to forgive myself, however. i didn't know who the boy was. i wouldn't have recognized him. and i was so overcome with grief at gigi's death that it didn't occur to me that i could have made an announcement to find him. 

i forgive myself. 

but i don't forget. 

“When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.” 
― Anthony de Mello

guilt causes shame gremlins to shout at you that you are unworthy, undeserving, useless, and a loser. guilt makes you hate yourself. which is why it is so important to forgive yourself and move on. learn from your mistakes. and don't repeat them. 

“It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.” 
― Criss Jami

guilt is the fear of being judged. by others, and by yourself. the fear of being judged makes me choose to do things that i don't want to do because i feel guilty saying no. i feel guilty standing up for myself. i feel guilty not doing what i feel obligated to do. 

“I would forget it fain,
But oh, it presses to my memory,
Like damnèd guilty deeds to sinners' minds.
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I would love to forget my guilt, but it is ingrained in my memory. so how do we move on? how do we forgive ourselves? what do we have to DO?

“Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion” 
― Lynn Crilly

we simply have to forgive. there are no steps. there is no magic wand. there is only forgiveness and knowledge that you have learned a lesson. life is about learning. life is one giant classroom. without mistakes, the world would be boring. without mistakes, there would be no creativity, no inventions, no inspiration, no adventure. guilt is what keeps our morals in check. 

be kind to yourself, and forgive yourself. 

xoxo

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