Bad

 

I am entering a period of my life where parts of my body are failing. Not all and not completely yet, but enough that it has brought me to a realization.

Deep down inside I feel not like I am aging, or my health is failing, but that I am a bad person. A person who has failed to do the right things the right way and this is some kind of divine retribution.

I have not been the ideal human, eating only to live and exercising in precisely the right way. But I think it goes far deeper than that.

I simply do not consider myself worthy of the people around me and the life I have lived.

There are all sorts of reasons for that, but I am trying to put that in the past.

In the present I know, intellectually, that I am okay, maybe even more than okay.

It is emotionally, where I come up short.

And those feelings give me nightmares at night, sorrow and despair during the long hours of the day while filling me with regret overall. 

I am trying to be more realistic from this point on. I am probably no more and no less bad, or imperfect than most people. They are just more accepting of themselves.

I am not bad. I am just overly critical.