I've been working hard for a long time to get over guilt issues.
For not telling someone about my aunt and uncle.
For surviving the car accident that killed my sister.
For the self-destrictive behaviors I engaged in in my late teens and early 20's.
For not leaving the men who abused me.
For being gay.
I recognize intellectually that I'm not responsible for my uncle's behavior, my sister's death, or my sexual orientation. Despite this, I can't let go of that little voice in the back of my head telling me that if I'd done certain things differently, my sister would be alive, or my uncle would have been in prison much earlier.
More difficult are the behaviors I willingly, knowingly, engaged in. I am responsible for those choices, so I deserve the guilt I feel about having made them. It's one of the issues I talk to my therapist about.
The food thing seems silly to me. Even as a child, I could see that whether I ate the food on my plate had nothing to do with starving children elsewhere. I'm not helping anyone by overeating. An easy solution is to put less than you intend to eat on your plate to begin with, then get more if you're still hungry. I wonder why it is that parents make their children eat when they're no longer hungry? Outside of anorectics, that makes no sense.
Gilda
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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.
~Steven Colbert
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