Work and personality

[S K]

“Be a better person. You can’t keep your personality out of the work. It’s impossible…. If you’re rigid or you’re distorting reality, it goes into the guitar. And when you play it, it comes back out. It’s disturbing. I used to believe that but I never had any proof of it. But I’ve played enough handmade guitars and then later met the maker. Sure enough, it’s inseparable….”

So true ... I have tried to keep the two separate, pushing me a point of dysfunction. Blocking the feelings out, refusing to acknowledge them, the fear of facing them because the cost of facing them was too much to bear. I thought I couldn’t face the onslaught of emotions, the fundamental changes that confrontation would bring in my life ... so            I kept them repressed over my school years, my college years, unable to acknowledge my feelings to myself and having no one to share them with… what I felt, believed, thought about my future and this separation is what screwed things up.

I’ve repeated these statements or similar ones to myself or at least had thoughts and feelings representative of these feelings but this is the first time I’ve been able to put these in words. I’ve beaten myself over this. I’ve essentially, in effect been beating myself over being me. So I forgive myself. I deserve to forgive. I was a child, doing my best to live in a world I felt alienated from and it was a protective cover in a world in which I had no say. I wish part of the forgiveness was a forgetting of memories or at least a separation of the feelings of failure and mistake-making from the realizations derived from these memories.

 

[S K]

The problem is I keep relieving it again and again.My memories don't stop coming back to my mind every time something reminds me of it.

[Iris]

I could sign what you have written. These are exactly the same feelings I have or had. Especially "I've been beating myself over being me."

I just want to add that the hope of you to forget the unpleasent memories is not possible. As I know from my experience you have to go through these feelings like sadness, anger, shame... after you have relived these feelings, you will feel better.