Musings

Today I've felt a little down, not too bad, though, just a slight bit of despondence. I've been listening to classical music, which has very much reflected my mood.

In preparation for therapy I've been looking over my manual and decided I should make a 'diary card' kind of entry here in this journal, especially as there are some issues that I'm really having to consider and own up to.

I typed this all out earlier, but the post was lost in the aether that was a Blogger publishing glitch. So here goes the second attempt...

First of all, I went to court yesterday. I had paid off the cheque that got me there, and I'd been given to understand that the charges would be dismissed, but instead I must pay fines and have yet another one of these on my record. One is a mistake; two perhaps. But by now it's obvious that any rationalisations I may have had about being poor or unlucky in terms of my chequing account really must be thrown out the window. I know how to balance a chequebook. I don't always do it, and yes, there have been honest mistakes, where I didn't know about the bounced cheque until it had gone through the county attorney's office and onto court. But there have been other times, when I have been under stress, that I have written cheques (usually for food) that I knew might not go through, where I was playing Russian roulette with the timing of a deposit, or when I just felt I had to do this to survive. I've paid them, of course, but only after paying banking or other fees, and now I have 'theft by deception' on my record about four times, which frankly makes it habitual. It took me a long time to see it as really theft, and I know that was wrong. All I can say is that I have a really great ability to rationalise and deny or even conveniently forget things when they make me uncomfortable. The lack of impulse control and the constantly getting into situations that make things worse for me in the end are hallmarks of a borderline personality. I may not do some of the more extreme things borderlines are famous for, but I do enough. And I'm tired of dealing with the drama I've created and having to mop up messes. It's time to stop making them, I think. Past time, actually. I've come to realise that one reason I'm in a sort of limbo where it seems life won't go on to better things is that I haven't been dealing with the past and with these mistakes. I've essentially become a 'bad' person, a deadbeat, and I need to change in order to retain some sense of honour and dignity as a person. At the moment I don't even feel that I can claim my status as clergy, because the actions I've been doing would only reflect badly on my faith and on my Patroness. Instead, I would see myself as a pentitent.

On a related note, I've discovered that before I can return to therapy, I must pay a past balance of $300. I had convinced myself that I had already taken care of this, but my memory is notoriously fluid, and in actuality I probably didn't. It will take a couple of months to pay off, especially since I'm also working on court costs and fines. I hope to be back in therapy and back in school sometime this summer, perhaps on a road that will improve things, but only after I own up to what I've been doing and work on improving my own behaviour and thus taking responsibility for my own life, starting with owning up to things here in this forum, along with my hopes for change.