Recent events have led me to be caught up in my mind a little too much for my liking about how far I've come in the past few years. First, an incident of speaking with a previous ex boyfriend who had previously deemed me not marriage material. Then there was my attending a formal of a fraternity, where I got to see alumni that I have been friends with a long time, and meet new underclassmen of the fraternity. Finally, there is the impending move and future ahead of me with my significant other.
Basically, when I was in college, as any young adult trying to find their way, I sought my identity through countless nights of drinking and flirting. I have made several groups of friends, and several grand stories of adventures along the way. Sad to say, I am the joke and punchline to most of those stories now. Tales of my ridiculous antics of getting drunk and flashing a boy, or dancing on table tops, or letting my beer tears get the best of me and crying in the middle of a basement party are just a few instances. In a sense, some of these stories give me pride, because I have come so far, and at least I know that I lived my college years to the fullest. But I am quite ashamed at times and basically over it. We have designated that person as "Candy" the flirtatious blonde who was quite the lush and binge drinker. Now, I have really found my true identity, a hard-working mature individual who is ambitious, mostly balanced, in a healthy and satisfying life-long relationship. I have the occasional drink, but when I do, it is often assumed that "Candy" is going to come out. This is the conflict.
I get torn in half when I am around these people of my past. Always torn with wanting to find approval. When I am around these people I find myself trying to balance the past with the present, being a bit of who I was, but maintaining who I am. However, the constant ridicule of people recalling past stories of me, humiliates me, and then there are guys who make assumptions of who I am and try to start things that make me feel uncomfortable, and I just end up wanting to flee from the entire situation. I can see how much I've changed, I guess I don't understand why nobody else can. And it actually makes me sick that I care so much about people not knowing. When talking to the ex, I ended up expressing my immense hatred for him for making me feel so insecure and pathetic the entire time we were together. At the formal, I ended up getting drunk and trying to balance dancing on the stage with my sisters, while standing around and talking about how far I've come, and then ended up at home wishing I could've erased the entire night because of how contradictory it felt and how not myself I was. Things got better when my boyfriend finally came home after a month of being away. Him being at my side reaffirmed to me that I really have changed, and I'm completely content with it. Yes, I tell stories about my past, and I'm sure they put me in a negative light, and I'd be a liar to try and state that I don't think of my past in a negative light. But I've learned from all of those mistakes. And if I hadn't made them, I probably would not be the successful, happy person I am today. So I do hate who I used to be, but I had a lot of laughs, a lot of tears, a lot of friends, a lot of memories, and that makes me happy. People tell me all the time to stop living in the past. What I ask, is that you stop living in my past. Stop assuming I am a certain way because of how I used to be. Stop bringing up those ridiculous stories and painting me to be something I no longer am. It's not fun. It's not just a joke. It hurts. I don't want to go back to then, I don't ever want to be that way again. I just want to be me.
No comments:
Post a Comment