I had a revelation the other day. Well, sort of, I think... but I thought, "I just want to be HAPPY." Is it that simple? If it was, then why wasn't I doing that?
I minored in psychology and though it has been a while, I recall studying cognitive therapy as one of my favorite theories of the psyche. Good ol' Albert Ellis and his development of Rational Emotive Therapy. At the time, I thought, "This is how I will live. It seems to make the most sense." Then years later, I had a baby and everything changes. 'Sense' went out the window along with everything else, and my husband looks at me and wonders, "Who did I marry?" And hoping that my fits are for the worse rather than for the better. Even with that, you never can tell.
So in my journal entry, I wrote:
I want to be happy. I want my husband to be happy - not just for him, but for myself as well. This whole time I have been thinking if I do things to make him happy, I have to compromise and I will resent him later and we just simply cannot have that - but not if it is for me... I'm happy, he's happy and vice versa. Holy s#@#$ - I have been living in negativity for the last year and a half and it is this simple, isn't it? Of course there were other factors that contributed to my neurosis and near mental breakdown but that should not have mattered to my happiness. I have been obsessing (another revelation) about this negativity, I had forgotten how to be happy. I need to continue to allow myself to feel but know the difference when I am being obsessive. I do consider myself the obsessive personality type, but that could be geared toward positive energy rather than negative. So simple.
So I'm writing this and feeling very positive about my progress, I reminded myself to that I still have exercise 5 to complete. These exercises are somewhat tedious but I do think that they serve a purpose. So for exercise 5, you are supposed to write about a major event in your life that includes three different voices of people you know. The first one is of someone that knows you very well. The second is of someone that knows you as an acquaintance. And the third is of someone you feel uncomfortable around. So I wrote about my wedding day using my sister's point of view, a teacher's (that I just started working with) point of view, and my ex-roommate's point of view.
Sister: My sister is getting married today. She is so happy and in love with her husband to be. He is a good man. I like him. I am glad that she is getting married to someone that will love her and be supportive of her. She has had some bad luck with men in the past and fortunately learned from them. Even though I am very excited for her, I am kinda sad that I am losing my 'single' sister. This is a big change for me as well as for her.
Teacher: My co-worker is getting married today. She seems to be very happy and he seems to be a nice man. She is usually nice when I see her at work but I don't know her very well. She is so pretty and smart (j/k - this is what I wish people say about me!)
My ex-roommate: My ex-roommate is getting married today. I am so jealous. She was such a nasty bitch to me when we lived together. I guess I want her to be happy but I really don't. She was so mean to me and wouldn't give my rent money back even though I trashed her house and broke our lease. Hopefully she changed and that is the only reason anyone would marry her. HAHAHAHA! Well, she is so pretty and smart so I can't blame him. (hehe)
So the purpose of these entries is to reveal the subjectivity of emotions on the same event. One person will say something completely different from another person. I suppose this particular exercise is good practice on how to distance yourself from your emotions. Even though sometimes we feel so strongly about something, we feel as we own them and that they rule us but in reality, emotions do not make us who we are.
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