30 Days of Truth

Shamelessly lifted from Christine's wonderful blog which you can find here

Almost identical exercise to one I've been recommended to undertake as part of my ongoing recovery but this one has slightly more questions so here goes ...

30 Days of Truth

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

Day one: Something you hate about yourself.

Well, quite honestly I could write a whole book on this, but summarising;
> attention seeking
> lying
> self pitying
> cowardly
> playing the victim
> fantasising ridiculous scenarios in my head
> problem drinking
> laziness
> procrastination

Of these I believe two are fundamental to the rest. It seems like my propensity for attention seeking leads on to me fantasising, playing the victim, self pitying and lying.

This might start off with a real event that I exaggerate out of all proportion ... creating a complete fantasy out of relatively minor events, or out of some throw away comment made either towards me or in my presence. These lies start to take on a life of their own as I pile embellishments onto untruths, often shifting them through time and amalgamating them and interweaving them with other truths. Quite a tangled web.

It would be fair to say that in life generally there are times when I find it quite difficult to unpick things to segregate fact from fiction, and this is partly an extension of that difficulty. Having a vivid imagination and a love of stories feeds into it as well ... a trait I inherited from my father who to this day still tells very tall tales.

Why?

It would be all too easy to point to self esteem issues and other "mitigating" circumstances but in the end I think I am searching for comfort in any way possible. This does not excuse what I do, but goes some way to explain it. On the whole I do not hurt others with this aspect of my character and it is never my intention to do so in any way. I hate hurting people. I think it is generally just a very immature aspect of my personality that I have so far largely failed to even try to address.

The second is problem drinking. This has it's roots to some degree in the same drive for comfort. It is also in part an attempt to break out of my own head ... to rebel against my own best interest and to block out the dissonance I feel at doing things that are at odds with my own moral code. For various reasons my head fills with thoughts and feelings which I find hard to tolerate. To escape these I have used various means the latest being to return to drinking in an addictive way. I can see that escapism is at the root of this which in itself is an extension of fantasising. The two are thus inextricably linked.

Basically I find it hard to deal with the real world. I see this as a fundamental weakness in my character which manifests itself in all the ways I've described above.

Strangely it never occurred to me when doing this exercise to focus on something I hate about my appearance ... ha! Lucky really since there is in fact a super long list of those!