Don't look back in hunger

Ah, don't you just love that one song that reminds you of your ex? :p

As you can probably tell, I'm spending a lot of my time reflecting on my past relationships at the moment. Not so much in a "woe is me" kind of way, but more in a "what the fuck was I thinking kind of way."

One of the symptoms of my BPD I've touched upon in the past is the amount of guilt I feel. An all-consuming pain that chokes and envelops me on a daily basis, I've discussed in therapy and chipped away at some of it, but the feeling's never really gone away. Of all the symptoms I live with, this is one of my least favourites.

Usually, I can't tell why I feel guilty, I wake up searching for reasons to feel guilty even when there aren't any there, simply because it's how I'm used to feeling. Yesterday it was because I hadn't re-potted my plant Hugh, once I did that it moved onto having spent money on the supplies I needed to do so. It's unrelenting and exhausting and also something I find really hard to explain.

One of the things I felt guilty for a long time for was cheating on my first boyfriend. I was 18 at the time and I contributed it to our breakup even though, to my knowledge, he was unaware of it at the time he broke up with me. Linking back to my previous post about self-sabotage as a form of self-harm, I knew he'd leave me when he found out. As a result of this, I believed I would receive the treatment I deserved and feel the pain I thought I was meant to feel once my actions came to light. I believed that I was cheating on him as a way of hurting myself. It was a ridiculous thought process to have at the time and, even now, I still can't make much sense of it.

The guilt I felt because of cheating on my first boyfriend lasted with me for a long, long time. For years, and even now as I type this, I feel like the reason I have bad luck in relationships is because of how I behaved when I was with him. I believe I deserve to be treated badly.

This random reflection into my first relationship comes as a result of him popping up as someone I might know on my Instagram. I'm not usually one to cyber stalk, but given that he looks exactly the same as he did the last time I saw him I thought I'd have a bit of a nose to see what had changed.  He's moved, he has a new Mrs and that's about as far as I got. I'm a masochist but I'm not stupid, I know going any further wasn't going to do me any good.

I considered following him on Instagram to say hi, but what would be the point. It sounds cliche but I almost don't even recognise pictures of who I was back when I was with him. Although I was still dealing with a lot of the same shit, this was pre-diagnosis, pre-rape, pre-everything. I can honestly say I was a completely different person then to who I am now, and from looking at his picture it seemed as if our relationship hadn't really happened. It was so long ago, and things were so different back then. There are some things I'm going to have to re-visit whilst I work on my relationship with my self, but old boyfriends certainly aren't one of them.

xXx