Oh, That Guilt and Shame

Now it is 22 hours before the arrival of my wife for our family visit. Just wanted to provide an update. Even now and again, my subconscious makes me fully aware of what I have done. This is not to say that I am clueless to what I have done to my family and myself. However, I do my best to put the past in the past and learn from those horrible mistakes. Last night my subconscious took over and I had one those guilt and shame dreams. I can remember only bits and pieces but the theme was definitely guilt and shame. I was in an office setting with people I used to work with all through my working careers. I can remember walking down one of the corridors and thinking everyone was looking at me in shame. I ran into a few of those people I used to work with and all I could see them do is shake their heads in disgust. I’m not quite sure where or why this dream soundly cropped up. I don’t know if it has anything to do with my wife’s arrival and if I had to guess I would say it probably does. Yes, I do my best to live in the present with a very positive attitude. This is the case 98% of the time, but there are still times where that remaining 2% hits me in my subconscious mind. Thankfully, these dreams are few and far between or I would be in big trouble. I take this dream as a reminder and I will file it away. Over the course of my lifetime I have had a habit of conveniently forgetting about those previous mistakes. It would be very difficult for me to forget these past three years. However, if I weren’t in recovery, I would probably forget like I did all those other times.

Are forgiving and forgetting synonymous? I think not; however, part of forgiving is to place the past in the past. This does not mean to forget at all, it means to move forward learning everyday to be a better person. Obviously, I still have those thoughts of guilt and shame as it is in my subconscious. I do not dwell in the past and do live life one day at a time. I could analyze this dream to death and doing so wouldn’t do me any good. I suspect these dreams do pop up from time to time which does serve as a good reminder. What I have done was terrible to my family and myself. However, I have experienced so many wonderful things because of those terrible actions and I am eternally grateful. Yes, it was extremely bad but everyday it gets better and better.

Nothing really interesting happened with the exception of the meeting on how to attack staphococous. (sp?) Yes, this is a large problem in the Ca prison system but thankfully not here. It all ties in to the overcrowding issue which I have beaten to death. Of course, staph breeds in the bathrooms and I do my very best to kill all of the germs. The supplies I use need to be improved and this should happen. I will continue to do my very best in keeping the bathroom areas as clean as possible.

As I conclude, my wife will be here in 21 hours and 30 minutes!