Blame and Forgiveness

Some self-disclosure here...  what do you blame yourself for in your life?

 

 

"In my life...I’ve found it way too easy to blame myself for a lot.  I blame myself probably more than is fair for “messing it up” ... but the common thread is my being too eager to find something wrong with myself to blame ...  I don’t think I like to blame myself, but it just always seems like the easier thing to do.  I have always been my harshest critic; teachers, coaches, and counselors have told me this throughout the years.  They always pointed that out as my greatest weakness, my most debilitating quality.  I have been struggling for years to work with this quality and turn it into a positive, but it always seems to get the best of me and make me feel like the world is crashing down on me. 

I don’t know where the insatiable desire to achieve came from for me.  Lee says that I grew up feeling inadequate, like my mother didn’t love me (since she was never around, and I probably tried to decipher why that was).  I always tried to fill that hole and that need to be loved and appreciated by overachieving in school.  I was taught that perfection was the best way; we must strive to be the best we can.  I do remember Dad being upset once when I got a B instead of an A, but this was never a chronic, abusive environment, just high expectations.  I always knew that I represented my family and my race and that if I messed anything up, it made a lot of people look bad.  I always grew up being told that I had to help Mexicans look good, to change the way Americans thought of Mexicans.  I guess that was a lot of pressure.  And then growing up being the main responsible one in the home was a lot of pressure too.  I even blamed myself when Dad died.  I felt like there was more I could have done, more I should have known, more questions I should have asked, I should have been more involved with the hospital stay.  I’ve just always put so much pressure on myself for everything, like having too high expectations of myself and then letting everything disappoint me when it all went wrong.  "