I want a divorce

Lately I've had a hard time living with myself. Really, i don't like me very much. I wouldn't get along with someone like me very well, and when i meet people like me, i don't like them. In fact, i avoid them, which is a normal reponse for dealing with awkward, ugly things. When we find something repulsive, we naturally want to be, well, repulsed, be pushed away. We want to get as far away as possible, or we squish the little slithering thing quickly with a tissue and throw it away so we won't have to look at it or be reminded of it's unpleasantness. But if what repulses me most at the moment is myself... I can't get away from myself. I can't break into a seperate person who can stand in judement of myself from the safe vantage point of "not being like that". Just as I cannot, as an actor, REALLY play a character unless I can find something sympathetic about him, some reason he is able to live with himself - otherwise the character becomes a hollow charicature of a person, a hollywood "front" like the fake towns in the old westerns, just a carefully presented exterior with nothing behind it but the functional struts required to maintain the illusion. Because i am stuck with me, i cannot wholly repudiate myself. I can repudiate my actions or motives or choices, but i have to maintain some sort of basic sympathy for me - or i will never be able to put much energy behind "overcoming" my struggles, because why would you want someone you can't stand to win? I am having trouble with that basic sympathy. Everything i thought was valuable, or good, about me, from the "rightness of my cause" to my supposed " necessary perspective" it all feels hollow, like those hollywood sets, something biult purely to convey the desired impression.
And of the steps i have taken to combat this disgust, to move towards a me i can live with, have not worked out well. A decision to stop intentional deception of myself and others, regardless of the consequences of the truth, has so far resulted only in greater injury and pain, which tempts me to return to my earlier assumption that a lie that makes people happy is justifiable, an assumption i nevertheless cannot respect.

I suppose that the quest to "feel good about yourself" is not a Christian one, and that being utterly, inescapably convinced of one's own lack of merit is a good starting point for a Christian who wishes to receive grace. But while i could myself easily repeat the arguments stating why this is not the case, receiving such grace seems like avoiding resposibility for my actions. Mind you, it is apparent that my raging guilt, which would have me feeling wholly responsible for everything from my failed relationship to the invasion of Iraq, has yet to produce any change in my behavior, and being consumed with it has kept from reaching out to others in need who i might have been able to help. Punishing myself does not make me a better person. In fact, it may be another form of self-absorbed pride- another way to justify myself-saying " i may have done these things, but at least i was"good" enough to torture myself about them."

The idea of grace, after all, is that we cannot earn anything, we cannot be good enough to deservedly pat ourselves on the back and say, " I'm an ok person" And grace is the focal point of my whole professed belief system. God supplies our self worth simply because he chooses to value us, and from that foundation of unconditional and unearned love and acceptance, we build better lives out of purer motives than simply trying to prove to ourselves we aren't a waste of air and water. That's how this is supposed to work, anyway. I'm still not sure what stops us from saying "thanks God, for taking care of my nagging conscience, now i'll go on being a bastard, if you don't mind." Maybe i still don't have a very good grasp on that unconditional love and acceptance.