I've been trying to just not think about Lidia but that doesn't seem to be working too well. I am going to try some advice from the "Art of Conscious Living" book. I am going to allow myself to feel sad, when I feel sad. I can't really block it anyway so if I accept it, and experience it fully, I can try and allow it to run its course and maybe get past it.

I also want to stop feeling the shame in the way I am feeling. It's not wrong or bad to feel sad for the right reasons. It's not like I'm a depressive person who feels sad often for no reason. That would be, well, sad! It's okay to miss her and the good things she brought to our relationship and it's okay to feel sad that it didn't work out and to let go of the good parts while realizing that the bad parts were why I wanted to breakup all along. So much easier said than done, though.

That these feelings touch on emotions from my childhood doesn't really seem to help me deal with them any better or easier. I can intellectually understand that they dredge up so many unresolved issues and feelings from my childhood but until I can integrate the emotional with the intellectual, I can still feel almost overwhelmed by a desire to get back with Lidia.

I think I need to finish the tasks in the "Coming Apart" book and write the narrative of our breakup. I think it'll help to write down the reasons for the ending and all the things I saw in Lidia that just made it impossible for me to stay with her. I know I am still carrying a lot of anger and resentment towards her too. I feel foolish for believing what she said over and over even after it became obvious that what she said and what she was doing were completely different.

I just thought of something else. I must forgive myself for treating her so badly too. I am also carrying around a lot of guilt for some of the things I said to her and how abusive I got with her when I drank too much. I don't really like myself when I think of some of things I said to her and the way I said them. I feel so bad for the way I treated her that part of wanting to take her back is to assuage these feelings and to somehow, make it up to her as a sort of penance for my guilty conscience.

Maybe that's where some REBT can help. It's pretty big on Unconditional Self Acceptance. I like myself not matter what, even though I may have done things that I don't like. That's the hard part, I think. I need to figure out a way to tolerate those behaviors in myself that I would definitely put up with from other people. I would never have put with the way I treated Lidia. I think that tolerate is not the best term for this. Maybe, I need to try and accept that I'm capable of such things. The only thing I can think of is to try and work out a way so that it doesn't happen again and figure out a way to forgive myself if it does. I mean I do and will make mistakes, like everyone on this planet.

The funny thing is that I DO tolerate some behaviors in others that I would have sworn I would never tolerate. Why is it so hard to do the same of myself? Why do I set the standards for my own behavior higher, for certain things, than my standards for others? I guess again that tolerate isn't the right word. I accept that people are flawed, including myself. Accept, acceptance, that's a much better word but it implies acquiescence, so that's not quite right either. At least, I feel I'm moving in the right direction. Working out these unresolved feelings and issues may help me to avoid doing things I don't like in the future.