Forgiving yourself for past mistakes seems to be one of the most difficult things to do because you can’t take back any of the things you did, and more especially, the person that you ultimately betrayed is yourself.
We know that that we’ve betrayed ourselves because our conscience tells us so. The conscience is something we’re all born with; all of us have both mind and conscience, so we cannot hide from ourselves or even fool ourselves. When you do something that you know is wrong (not because you’ve been socialised into believing that that action you’re about to take is wrong, but that you have a gut feeling that it’s wrong), but go ahead and do it anyway, you are betraying yourself because you are doing something that is against your own intrinsic beliefs.
This became more pronounced to me when I realised that I’ve always felt like at some point in my life, I let myself down, not because society told me so, but my conscience told me so. I convinced a good friend of mine, Kg, to allow me to use her diary excerpt where she poured her heart out about feelings of self betrayal and self sabotage. In the excerpt, it’s almost as if she’s repenting and asking for forgiveness. Check it out:
Im like so bent on living “la vida loca”, on living my own life according to my rules and my way. Those rules and ways were always dictated by society nw that I look back, so in reality I was reli living for other ppl. I made mistakes, I did things im nt proud of. I turned against God & I sinned against myself. I betrayed myself by nt standing up 4 what my conscience was telling me abt what is rite and what is wrong for me. I sacrificed myself for their attention. I bowed down to their demands & said no 2 my needs & knowledge of what I knew was rite, I was afraid to be rejected by them & be abandoned. I felt lonely at the time & friends were gods. They were what seemed to be my life out of loneliness, a ticket to happiness. And with guys, disastrous! You dnt need to have sex to mess yourself up in relation to the opposite sex. I wasn’t aware of my emotional promiscuity, bt looking back now, I realise I was so desperate for their love that I gave most of me, valuable parts, & they saw it & treated it as nothing. I reli have a face hey. All my life I looked perfect & unproblematic on the outside, bt there was lots of self-loathing, rejection, hurt on the inside, distance 4rm myself, sexual sins that brought 1second pleasure & a lifetime of pain, pain that ate @ the core of myself, where I felt like I had robbed myself, sold myself too low, was a piece of junk that was worth nothing. I felt stupid (emotionally, socially, academically, spiritually), even tho I knew what I wanted. I constantly blacked out when I knw what I want, when it is confronted by sum1’s wants, when they clash. I always felt I wasn’t true to myself, & that no1 truly knows me coz I hide behind a façade. You knw Lord, I always felt U were stingying me of the good life, holding out on me. I felt like a relationship with You meant I cudnt live the life I wanted the friends, the in-group, the hott guys, parties (cool hotspots with cool ppl). Funny enuf, those I was rolling with were never reli committed to me, so when they left, I collapsed. I was lost, felt like I was bereft of identity, I was desolate. I made myself a doormat & a punching bag so I cud win ppl’s affection. Never worked. So I sabotaged myself. God, hw do I move on from this? Hw do I forgive myself? My conscience is weeping….
Kg asked for my advice on how to move on from this self betrayal, self sabotage, and I didn’t know what to say to her. I guess you gotta learn how to forgive yourself for your mistakes, because at the end of the day, you didn’t know better. You look for love in the wrong places; you look to people to validate you as a person. But just like a car needs to go back to the manufacturer when it breaks down and has faults, we need to go back to our Manufacturer when we break down. After all, we didn’t create ourselves, so we can’t come up with the manuscript on who we are and how to fix what is deeply broken.
I salute Kg for allowing me to share this with you guys, and for helping me to reflect on where I’ve been, where I am and where I’m going.
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