Forgiveness

I hesitate to write this as it sounds a little over dramatic, but probably one of the hardest things I have to learn to do in this life is forgive myself. I have no problem with forgiving other people. I believe life is too short to go to bed on an argument, and I will pretty much always make the first move to patch up something that has gone wrong between me and someone I care about. Though I try very hard not to get myself into a situation where something would go wrong anyway.
Forgiving myself? That's a whole other thing. Things that I would forgive other people for in a heartbeat take weeks and weeks for me to accept and move past if I do them. I will endlessly mentally beat myself up over the smallest thing. Not very healthy.
Tonight, though, I might have had a bit of a breakthrough. Those of you reading the comments and post of the last day or so, will have noticed that I had been rather stupid. I kept this blog a secret from someone who mattered to me, and whose trust and opinion I valued. When I eventually told him, he was understandably upset. I was probably more upset. I was so, so angry at myself for having kept it a secret. I spent a fair amount of last night crying, and struggled at work today to not keep going over it in my head again and again. I had to rush off to the toilets a couple of times to mop up the tears. I didn't think there was any way I could get past the guilt of knowing I'd screwed up. I knew I would be punished, and that it would be more than deserved, but I didn't think it would enable me to put the incident behind me.
It turns out I might be wrong. I'm currently sitting on a *very* sore bum. It was a fairly long punishment, and it was a hard one too. I tried my utmost to stay in position, as I knew everything I was getting was fully deserved. I was mostly successful as well.
And then it was over. And we talked. And by the end I felt, I don't know, lighter? And I can read the post and not burst into tears, but look at it a bit more objectively and go "yes, I really mucked up, but it's been dealt with, and maybe I shouldn't obsess over it for the next three weeks". If this is what forgiving myself feels like, it's a nice feeling. I may have to try it again.