Forgiveness. Life would be easier if we only forgave ourselves.

Until a few years ago, the hardest thing I had to forgive myself was making stupid decisions about men. That was it. Forgive me for not going after the ones I wanted and forgive me for letting those I could care less about take advantage over me.

Forgiveness was easy back then.

The year my dad got sick was a busy year in my life. I have to forgive myself for not spending more time with my father. For letting him go through so much alone when I always wanted to be there for him but just couldn’t bare to see him fade away. I have forgive myself for all the harsh thoughts I had. Believing that if only he wanted to live, he could fight the cancer. The cancer that only took 3 months to end his life.

I have to forgive myself for letting myself get completely drawn into the world of alcohol after he passed. Forgive myself for blurring out the remainder of that year, for gaining 80 pounds over a span of 6 months and for wallowing. I have to let myself understand that it was OK to get depressed.

It’s hard to forgive oneself. It’s even harder to think someone who has passed would forgive you.

In the long run, I have to forgive myself for never taking care of my body. For letting it balloon up. Sometimes I give myself such a hard time for it, but in the end I just have to forgive myself.

Read all I’ve got to write about here.

My parents, was special. Are special. Depending on which one I refer to.

Growing up with my parents weren’t easy but it wasn’t hard either. My mother is a strong woman, who knows how to get her needs across. In some ways that was both positive and negative growing up.

As a woman, having a strong woman raise you is bound to give you a sense of strength and pride in yourself but as a child trying to get along with other kids, having your mother dominate the community you live in can be extremely stressful. Especially if you live in a community abundant with men who aren’t accustomed to listen to a woman. My mother however earned their respect.

My dad on the other hand wasn’t as strong, at least not in their relationship. Don’t get me wrong, my dad wasn’t weak, he just couldn’t hold a candle to my mother. My mother the superwoman. Or so she seemed.

They were married for 20 years, of which I remember hearing my mother wanting a divorce for at least ten. Ten years of understanding that my mother was unhappy and that my father tried to please her but just not didn’t try hard enough (or was unable to please her). He loved her I am sure.

My father died five years ago. He and mom had been divorced for five years. I remember him crying when he laid in a hospital bed and received a call from my mother that she didn’t have the time to see him just then. She did however sit with him when he passed away.

My father was 24 when he married my mother (she was then 30). My mom always says, if we had been business partners we’d be millionaires because we are a well oiled machine. And I have to agree. We never lacked anything. We never noticed the period when both were out of jobs and we were brought up to be well adjusted individuals. Intelligent, well fed, funny, compassionate individuals. But we were bruised when it came to relationships. Especially me and my sister.

We watched our parents, they hardly hugged, they rarely kissed. They were usually civil. Sometimes they fought. My mother was miserable. She was dominant in everything she did, she didn’t want to rule our house.

I love my mother. She is still alive. When dad was alive I would call him, crying after another fight with mum and he would tell me You clash because you are so alike. I miss my dad everyday. I wish I had spent more time with him, told him I loved him more often. I wish I had forgiven him everything I felt he needed to be forgiven of. My mother is still the strong one. She is remarried and happy. She is like a best friend and a mother at the same time. I wouldn’t bare losing her too.

Read the entire list over here.

Don’t we all know that it’s easier to find something we dislike about ourselves than to find something we truly like?

Well I found something, or actually my sweet Mr Man pointed out a quality about myself that I was unaware of and once pointed out I realized how much I loved it.

I’m extremely competent in reading people. I never thought about it before, but I can usually tell when someone is lying. I will not call them on it because more often than not it’s a tiny white lie, but sometimes it’s something big that will hurt me. Like my mother, sometimes she will say something encouraging but I can tell she wants to fill it out with something else.

It was usually just something I thought was my own insecurity, that I over-analysed, because that was what my mum used to say I did. Towards her, or my sister. But Mr Man pointed out how often I’d end up being right, and how often I had been spot on regarding people and circumstances. So now I don’t doubt it any more. I always was a killer at knowing which guys fancied my friends…

Read the whole list here.

The very ultimately first love I can remember is of a boy at kindergarten. I used to chase him around the playground begging him to be mine and when we had naps, me and my friend would lie on either side of him holding his hands.

One day I asked him for a photograph and I think I held on to that picture for ten years. Not because I always loved him, but because it was the first love. The first boy I really loved.

There isn’t much to say about it because I don’t remember much about it except that I was jealous when he played with my friend and I wanted him to play with me instead. I suppose many people wont call that a love because you are too young to understand the concept, but I believe love exists without understanding and what I felt for him sure enough was love.

Why else would I still remember his name, now twenty years later?

Want to read the complete lists? Go here.

This is not a good subject to discuss. This is where I could go on forever. I mean, I could list item after item both big and small. I’ll do my best to keep this short and concise. I’m unsure if I’m supposed to only list one item or all, something is singular, so I will write this post about the single biggest thing I hate about myself.

The inability to love myself.

It’s not that I hate myself, it’s not that I ruin my life. It is however a deep seething inability to love myself that make me constantly trip over my own good intentions.

I have wants, and needs. I want to lose weight, I hate the way I look. But I constantly manipulate myself into destroying the good work I do. I lost 50 pounds so I felt I was entitled to… stray from my diet. I never turned back to my narrow path and soon the 50 pounds with an additional 10 had fixated themselves all over my body.

I do that constantly. Try to fix what depresses me, and then I think but I deserve…and I end up destroying my good efforts.

I quit drinking and wasn’t even longing for a glass of wine, so I went out and had one with dinner, which was followed by another the night after. Soon enough I was back to my old alcoholic ways. Or I stayed away from sugar for a year and never really longed for it but everyone was praising it so it must be good, or maybe that cake tastes better, or everyone else is eating it…

Or what about the time I smoked so much pot I hardly ever left the house?

I don’t do mediocre. If I get hooked I decide to take it to extremes.

If something is going well, I decide to destroy it. I don’t mentally decide, lets destroy this good thing, I just think my efforts have entitled me to deviate from the plan. Each time I know the cost and what the result will be. Yet I convince myself this time will be different and I deviate.

Somehow I feel, this is because of my inability to truly love myself. If I truly loved myself I’d let me be happy, let me enjoy my successes and stop ruining things for myself.

This is something I need to work at, I just don’t know where to start. Once I’m happy again something inside me will say “you deserve” and when my other self try to keep me on the narrow path the evil me will heckle and say What are you afraid of, you’re strong now. You can do this and still continue on your narrow path. But I never can.

To see the full list of daily subjects go here!

So I seem to be a sucker for meme’s, blogrings, blogfests and other whathaveyou’s… so why not do one more.

While surfing around Cerebral Lunchbox I read that Witless had her own little blogfest, one that suits me perfectly… (for those with 300 followers or less, I think I have one follower). This recent topic, someone who took advantage of you (or someone you took advantage of) is in honor of Thanksgiving, so while spilling my guts I guess I should confess, I’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving. It’s not as shocking as you might think, I don’t live in North America.

Anyway, towards our topic. Took advantage of me. I bet I can think of a couple of stories to tell you that somewhat follow into the right category, even though at the time I was fully aware I was being used, and I let myself be it. However, when trying to think of a time when I didn’t let myself be royally screwed over(but still got kicked while lying down), it’s harder to remember a single time. Not because they didn’t exist, but rather because I seem to have completely wiped the memories from my mind. I remember feeling used, humiliated and angry but I don’t remember the event that had led me to those feelings.

I wasn’t aware that I had blocked something from my past like this until this topic came to light, so I’ll write about one of those moments when I was letting myself be used and maybe it will trigger some sort of flashback.

It was a couple of years ago. I was in my early twenties, looking good, the best I ever had, feeling even better. Still I was unsure of myself, as I always had been, but I was not going to apologize for it any longer.

I started working as a mail-carrier. It was an easy if somewhat exhausting job. At my workplace was a man I instantly fell attracted to. Instantly wanted to get to know. His interest in me was obvious too.

We soon got to talking, we became friends, and I was very clear with my intentions. I wanted him.

He said he wanted me too but he kept me at an arms length.

He made me dance after his tune, I helped him with his job, I helped him with his friends. I listened to him when he told me about other girls in his past. He wasn’t ready for a relationship.

He led me to believe he wanted me but wasn’t ready.

After a night out with co workers, we ended up in bed together. I was ecstatic. I thought we were moving forward. I was so wrong, so mislead. He said he wasn’t ready for a relationship. He wasn’t ready to commit.

A week after I heard about his new girlfriend.

Needless to say, they only lasted a year and that was all the time I needed to put some distance between us. I made this short and concise because it still pains me today. Five years later. I really liked (I don’t think I’d reached love) him, and he never trusted me enough or wanted me enough. He always claimed he was my second choice, but I never understood after whom he came second since all the other men came after I realized I couldn’t have him.

I guess men play games as well. Since that guy I am as straight as an arrow. When I met my Mr Man I told him what I expected, what I was willing to give and what wouldn’t be accepted. I think that is exactly why we got along so well.

Introductions tend to be boring. Hello, my name is, I’m so and so many years old and I live in. And then everyone lose interest.

But we categorize ourselves through these things. Age, sex, location. After that, we look for other things to relate to, other characteristics.

I’m almost thirty. A few months left until I reach an age where I no longer can pretend I’m not an adult. I fear adulthood. I don’t feel mature, secure, in control. I feel like a teenager stuck in an ageing body with no say in how fast things are moving around her. I wish there was a pause button.

At the same time I’m extremely happy to have left the insecure early twenties behind me. To have learned when to say no and that I decide over me and my body. To know that my happiness is just as important as everyone else’s, not just assume it, but to truly feel and believe it.

I’m no a social person. I don’t have a lot of friends. The few friends I have though are truly dear to me. I cherish them. I take care of them. Sometimes I miss my childhood companions but there’s always a reason we no longer hang out and that is either because we don’t get along or either of us don’t care for what the other has become. Usually they don’t care for whom I’ve become. Someone you can’t push around.

I don’t do things I don’t want to do. Usually that means I don’t attend all parties, I don’t watch you while you jump through hoops. I’m dead set in my ways and my time is precious.

I’m on my last year of college. But we don’t call it college where I’m from. In may, I’ll graduate, getting my masters in Business Economics. What I fear the most right now is that I wont get a job within my skill level and will have wasted 5 years in school for a minimum wage salary.

To wrap this up here are some words that characterize me… insecure, clever, observant, stubborn, compassionate, in love, overweight, lazy, funny, loyal, loving, depressive, cuddly. I could go on, but for now you get to settle for that.

To see the full list of daily subjects go here!

There are two thirty day blogger month memes scattered over the internet right now. There might be more but these are the ones I’ve noticed. I don’t write daily, I don’t intend to write daily. But I wanted to write these.

So here’s what I will do. I will write from both, I will try to write all the 60 items, I will start with day one from one list to be followed with day one from the other, until all items are written. That is the plan.

I wont post the full lists every time. I’ll link back here for you to be reminded.

Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – What you ate today
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – What you wore today
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – What you wore today
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself