Tonight I am tormented, I am burdened by my own sins. I have made a realization that much of my depression and many of my stresses stem from just that, my own contemptible sins. Being human it's something I will always deal with, but perhaps I can learn to deal with it better, or even to control it. God willing, I might additionally become a better person in this process. Until then it seems that my insomnia plagues me even more so than normal. My guilt and imperfection keep me from finding the solace of sleep until the very wee hours of the morning, which in turn affects everything about me. It affects my attitude and energy levels, therefore affecting my duty as a wife and mother. It keeps me from being the person that I used to be, the carefree and animated person that I miss so much.
But you see I have a dilemma, a little secret my father let me in on some years ago. A gift, some call it. I agree that it could be considered a gift, but more often than not it feels an awful lot like a curse. It's a little something called compunction, and it tortures me on a daily basis. If you don't understand what compunction is, Webster's Dictionary defines it as "anxiety arising from awareness of guilt" but it's much more than that. It's like the every day person's conscience magnified and multiplied ten times over. The average person feels immense guilt when they do things that they know are wrong" stealing, lying, cheating, etc. But a person who possesses this "gift" of compunction feels that immense guilt regardless of the degree of their wrong doing. For instance, I feel ashamed, remorseful, guilty even if I so much as think a negative thought about someone. I feel just as badly as if I've stolen something every time I cuss, or get angry, or lash out at someone.
So nearly every waking moment for me is spent reliving the shame and frustration of realizing that I've done something wrong. So imagine how I feel when I do something the ordinary person considers to be wrong. Perhaps this gives the reader more insight as to why I simply can not stop until I know that I am forgiven, the reason I've been on this recent mission to undo the wrongs I've done to people in the past. Because I know I have to, I am so acutely aware of my mistakes and sins that it literally tortures me not to try and absolve them. Not to compare myself to a saint, because I am by no means anywhere close to that, but I would assume that this is how many of them live out their lives. Being so acutely aware of right and wrong, but I would also imagine that they are much better at keeping themselves in check and much better at avoiding this pain.
It makes me wonder if this isn't what many great and misunderstood people have suffered from. How many people have been diagnosed with simple depression when it was much, much more than that? How do we know that many of our historical icons did not experience the very same ache only misunderstanding it to be something else? Poe, Van Gogh, Cobain to name a few. Or how do we know that they didn't understand? Maybe they knew precisely why they suffered and unable to control their sinful ways, suffered all the more. Maybe I'm just trying to justify what I struggle with by hoping that I'm not the absolutely only one. I've never known another person with this so-called "gift" so I'm not really sure how to deal with it exactly. Either way, I can't seem to find my way to sleep so I thought I'd share a bit of the maddening regret living in my head.
Bonne nuit.
But you see I have a dilemma, a little secret my father let me in on some years ago. A gift, some call it. I agree that it could be considered a gift, but more often than not it feels an awful lot like a curse. It's a little something called compunction, and it tortures me on a daily basis. If you don't understand what compunction is, Webster's Dictionary defines it as "anxiety arising from awareness of guilt" but it's much more than that. It's like the every day person's conscience magnified and multiplied ten times over. The average person feels immense guilt when they do things that they know are wrong" stealing, lying, cheating, etc. But a person who possesses this "gift" of compunction feels that immense guilt regardless of the degree of their wrong doing. For instance, I feel ashamed, remorseful, guilty even if I so much as think a negative thought about someone. I feel just as badly as if I've stolen something every time I cuss, or get angry, or lash out at someone.
So nearly every waking moment for me is spent reliving the shame and frustration of realizing that I've done something wrong. So imagine how I feel when I do something the ordinary person considers to be wrong. Perhaps this gives the reader more insight as to why I simply can not stop until I know that I am forgiven, the reason I've been on this recent mission to undo the wrongs I've done to people in the past. Because I know I have to, I am so acutely aware of my mistakes and sins that it literally tortures me not to try and absolve them. Not to compare myself to a saint, because I am by no means anywhere close to that, but I would assume that this is how many of them live out their lives. Being so acutely aware of right and wrong, but I would also imagine that they are much better at keeping themselves in check and much better at avoiding this pain.
It makes me wonder if this isn't what many great and misunderstood people have suffered from. How many people have been diagnosed with simple depression when it was much, much more than that? How do we know that many of our historical icons did not experience the very same ache only misunderstanding it to be something else? Poe, Van Gogh, Cobain to name a few. Or how do we know that they didn't understand? Maybe they knew precisely why they suffered and unable to control their sinful ways, suffered all the more. Maybe I'm just trying to justify what I struggle with by hoping that I'm not the absolutely only one. I've never known another person with this so-called "gift" so I'm not really sure how to deal with it exactly. Either way, I can't seem to find my way to sleep so I thought I'd share a bit of the maddening regret living in my head.
Bonne nuit.
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