Yes, I am keeping a gratitude diary. Or at least every day I add a few lines to a page in my Dutch blog. But mostly I don’t feel happy, or grateful. So I kind of force myself to write some items in that page. And yes, somehow spending some time every day on that page makes me focus on something like being grateful or happy about at least some things during the day. But it’s not a real gratitude diary as mostly I don’t feel it, mostly I don’t feel grateful.
And it was someone who wrote me an e-mail letter a few weeks who pointed this out to me as she asked something like whether I really felt grateful about the things I write in that page. And I realize mostly I don’t. And that made me think. And of course it stuck in my thoughts for various reasons.
And the last few days things get more clear. As somehow my codependent behavior may be the cause that I feel so unhappy, that I can’t really be grateful, can’t really make a real gratitude diary. As I realize more and more that I am more concerned with the feelings and behavior of others than of that of myself, that I often don’t even know what I feel. And yes, of course I know I feel tense. But that seems about the only things I feel, tense or unhappy. Or both.
The strange thing I am reading though about codependency is that being codependent means that you have difficulty being alone. Which I don’t have. And I consider myself pretty autonomous with my own ideas and such. But I do have problems maintaining healthy relationships as it seems, mostly after a while, people are abandoning or avoiding me.
Anyhow, it seems at least I am slowly getting some sense of what’s going on. And that’s a start for being grateful, happy and satisfying personal relationships.