Guilt….

Revisiting guilt: as I’ve said before I am very guilt driven. It’s taken a while for me to understand this and to try to prevent this drive from overtaking my life.

As children we are, or I was, taught to be guilt driven. I would do something bad; be punished for it and then rewarded for doing something good or apologizing.

As an adult I believe that eating was a way for me to satisfy that guilt drive.

I would eat something I knew I shouldn’t, feel badly either physically or mentally, and then when the positive reinforcement never came (because I’m an adult) I would repeat the process still expecting to feel better at some point… Even though it wasn’t going to come, that feeling of doing right.

I am finding that I still want to repeat this process. less with food more with general behavior. Or even behavior that may be outside of what I consider acceptable.

Like sleeping with a 33-year-old man. Totally consensual. Moderately fun. and when done, I would say, not repeatable. Cause… Like… Sometimes experience counts!

But I beat myself up about that. Not because I slept with someone strange; because I slept with someone who is almost 20 years younger than I am. That felt “wrong”. oh not wrong enough for me not to do it! And it made me break one of my rules: do not date/sleep/see anyone under 40.

Interestingly, a good friend said maybe I need to stop making rules for myself. I had to give that a serious think. She was right. Now… The basic rules of… No killing, maiming, physically or emotionally hurting another are still in place. No stealing. Don’t lie (to myself or others). I think these moral rules are important and I would not choose to break them. But the self imposed rules that I set up… When broken… Put me into that guilt spiral. Those are the rules I need to examine and possibly toss out.

I don’t always know what they are… Ahead of time… But sometimes I do.

This is a whole new world I’m trying to navigate. Without harmful or ridiculous boundaries… But with boundaries that make sense… And are moral rather than emotional.