May 10
5
Getting Past the Past
The blog I am writing for you today has to do with something I have been thinking about a lot lately: My past. Now I’m not that old, relatively speaking of course, but I, like all of you have many memories both good and bad. It doesn’t really matter if you have been around for 90 seconds or 90 days, you have experiences that fill your every moment in time.
There are different periods of time we all have to go through in order to live through our lives, childhood, high school, adolescence, middle age, and old age, to name a few. With each phase of life there are new challenges, new sights to behold, new things to learn. Unfortunately, most times when I think back on my high school experience, I think of all these horrid moments filled with regret. These memories have been setting up camp in my mind lately. Something I am starting to figure out though, is that it’s over now, and I don’t need to be troubled with it anymore. IT’S OVER NOW AND I DON’T NEED TO BE TROUBLED WITH IT ANYMORE!!!!!
I can say that over and over, and sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t. I can remember so vividly the clothes that I wore, which might not have looked so good on me, the makeup I wore that accentuated the wrong features, the hair I never seemed to be able to get to look normal and that’s just the beginning. I can remember the people I so desperately wanted to hang out with, the crowds I wanted to fit into, and so many things that just went wrong day in and day out. Why did I say those things? What was I thinking when I did that? How much more obvious could I have been about liking that guy? It’s easy for me to hate who I used to be and drown myself in guilt for how things happened, but it doesn’t get me anywhere…except maybe back into those ugly clothes and not good enough feelings—back in high school. Which, if you’re like me, is one of the last places you want to go back to.
Let me give to you a thought that has come into my mind…It’s stupid to beat yourself up over things you did in the past because you did the best that you could with the knowledge and resources you had at the time. I didn’t know how pick out good fitting clothes or do my hair as well as the teen magazine star at the time. Here’s another thing to remember if you are looking back and hating yourself: You are a different person now than the one you were when you made those decisions. You have grown and changed and are so much better than that now. If you are different than you were, then the most important thing you could have gotten out of the experience happened, you changed, you progressed and now you have moved on from whatever wasn’t quite right about you before.
So maybe the two of us can forget about the things we did wrong a long time ago, and bask in the happiness that comes with moving on and growing up and most of all…getting better.
