Playing The Game
These entries are from a personal journal that I have kept over a period of years, and which has served as an extremely potent tool for both personal healing and personal growth.
I wasn’t sure sure how to organize the material, except to present it here in the order by which it presented itself to me.
I’m sure that there will be something in here which resonates for you. I have written it down here as it came out of the pen and onto the paper, with only the personal (as in superfluous) details removed, and the minimum of editing to facilitate readability.
So here goes…
First entry -
How the hell I am ever going to organize this mass and jumble of material into a workable form of self-expression, I do not know. It just does not seem, at the present, to have form and coherence to it, although this has happened to me in the past, and some quite lucid writings have arisen from the ashes of the original notes, which were laid down in a blaze of initial enthusiasm.
A Word To The Wise
I did not know for years what to do with this accumulation of journaling entries. For so long it was too painful and confusing to think of them in any form that would conform to a logical and/or coherent fashion. Many of the early journals got shredded or burned. There were enough of them to write a small library of books, it seemed. It all seemed so small and petty, so self-ingrained and self-absorbed. At least, it did in the beginning.
Yet as time passed and the tumultuous feelings began to level off into some semblance of order and coherence, the essence of the stuff slowly began to make sense.
As well, a lot of the early entries were so full of what now I can lovingly describe as babbling – a non stop stream of anger, hurt, resentment, guilt and, most of all, a consuming confusion about who I am, what I am, and my place and purpose in the world.
I did not have, on the inside, a meaningful place and purpose in the world, except for what I had been trained to believe myself responsible for – groomed to be responsible for – and guilty of, and therefore needing to be punished for. And who better to punish me than myself? who could know better than I what transgressions I had committed?
Well, you know, as I journaled I stumbled across some amazing emotional facts – I began to acknowledge that other people actually did love, regard and have respect/accept me for who I actually am, rather than for what I could do for them in order to win some basic form of quasi acceptance. Man oh man, talk about giving one’s personal power away in spades!
Well, from there to here has been a long and difficult journey. And there are still a few more rough spots to traverse. So, like anyone else, all I can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other until I reach my goal. So let’s carry on.
