a reality check you didn't know you needed
It’s strange when coming across something you wrote years ago feels like a personal message to present you.
There’s something I wrote in my journal when I was 16. It goes like this:
“How fair is it to be angry with a black hole for doing precisely the thing it was created to do?”
Man, I must have thought I was so cool and angsty writing that: some jumbled words that loosely applied to a minuscule version of whatever sensational scenario I was living in at the time, but, you know:
She was dramatic, but she was right.
Here’s the jive that brought me back to this line:
I took a lengthy road trip with a friend over the summer. In between podcasts and early 2000s bangers, we got to talking about retired friendships. She said something in between Colorado and New Mexico that made me open my mouth to respond, and then quickly close it:
“I feel like you really learn what you want and what you’re worth in college. You decide how you are and are not going to be treated by others, and act accordingly.”
She was right.
And just like that, I realized how much I had followed the first part, and played a game of blissful ignorance in the second.
For me, there was a period of life when I was simply allowing people to…treat me. Poor or well didn’t quite matter as much as if it was honest and true, no matter how good or bad.
Looking back, it feels like I spent most of this season of my life staring straight into the sun.
All metaphoric bullshit aside, I hated and was hated back. I loved and was loved back. I saw the ugliest and purest side of people. I allowed myself to be treated in ways I did and did not deserve and I justified most of it by telling myself that I wasn’t perfect either. I wanted to experience raw humanity, even if that meant breaking my own heart over and over again in the process. I don’t know why 18-year-old me was so hell bent on this endeavor, but as much as I would have loved to throw myself a pity party at the time, I kept reminding myself of this:
I am abundantly flawed.
I became obsessively aware of my shortcomings my freshman year of college. Being away from family and friends gave me more than enough time to self reflect, and I wasn’t pleased with what I had discovered. As the years progressed, I became more aware of my hypocrisies: the way I so often criticized others for things I had mastered the art in myself. I found bitterness and jealousy in places I had masked with inauthentic support and false joy. I was full of insecurities that I projected on the people around me. The more I dug, the more ashamed I was with the person I had spent so many years blindly defending. How many battles had I fought for my own paper castle of false self awareness?
Flashback.
There’s this picture of me from October 2017: I’m wearing a scarecrow t-shirt that I stole from my mom’s closet and I’m smiling in this classic mirror selfie I took in my dorm room. Whenever I come across this photo, I think the same thing every single time:
“I wish I could go back and give her a hug.”
I don’t know what it is. Maybe it was my inability to do winged eyeliner. Maybe it was my dedication to the idea that I could “change” the alcoholic frat guy I met three months before, or, maybe, it’s the way I remember seeing myself at the time - inferior and deserving of whatever came my way - no matter how good or bad, but always focusing on the bad.
I had this toxic mindset that I believed wholeheartedly in:
“I receive what I deserve.”
This is false. Untrue. Incorrect. Wrong. Fictitious.
Not everything in life is divine intervention. Not everything in life is karma. Sometimes, more often than not, things just…are.
Experiences aren’t always there to teach you a life lesson.
I spent so much time obsessing over a deeper truth: Do I deserve this because I am what I have done? Who am I to decide what’s right and wrong? I am what comes my way.
I dismissed myself over and over again in the name of humility.
You know, looking back? I find that I agree with who I was then to some extent. In fact, I think she was really onto something there for awhile. It’s crucial to feel guilt, reflect on the consequences of your actions and respond accordingly, regardless of how ugly or pretty that might look to others.
What I can’t agree with was my conscious effort to take everything that was given to me at face value, without reason or second thought: to blindly accept.
We correct what we can and accept what we can’t. This is all we can do in the present as we recognize our past. We move forward and tell the truth.
Flashforward.
Years later, I am oftentimes met with questions or passing judgement when retelling stories from past relationships, especially from this particular time in my life. I hear the same thing most every time:
"Why didn’t you cut them off? I would never let someone treat me like that.”
It’s a valid question. I mean, why didn’t I?
Here’s the curious thing about the past: it’s much easier to look at from the present.
There are so many things that I look back at now and think the same exact thing. I mean, my god:
“Why didn’t I cut them off? I would never let someone treat me like that.”
Here, my friends, is the sneakiest and sometimes cruelest form of growth: deciding how to respond to this question.
It’s so tempting when you’re older and you’ve realized your rights and wrongs: When you’ve solved the maze and found each and every dead end you could have, and have, taken.
You made it; you solved it. That’s all that matters, right?
Every memory comes with a story, to be told. By you.
You’re able to retell the past as something that paints you out to be the hero or the victim: something that makes storytelling rewarding rather than shameful. Something to mold into what you need in that moment. It’s so easy. It’s so - tempting. It’s something I’m guilty of.
The truth is,
Lately my stories have felt more like confessionals than a fairytale.
When you have the power to reinstate a narrative, it’s tempting to make it comfortable instead of true, even if you’re the only one who knows what really happened.
However, that’s the responsibility we have as human beings -
To live and share an authentic reality, no matter how ugly it may look. Which, to be fair, looks really ugly sometimes.
I have to stop myself before I sugarcoat something sour. 99% of the time, I really don’t want to tell the truth. I want to be cool, and perfect, and a breeze to get along with. I want to be the easy girl with no baggage.
But that’s not true, and it never will be.
As hard as it is,
I set my pride aside to curate a real connection with the people I surround myself with. I often cringe with my own memory and cower in self inflicted judgement. It’s uncomfortable. It always is and always will be.
You know, I call it growth, but it doesn’t always feel like that in the moment.
The truth is that the truth is sometimes, almost always, really embarrassing.
I’ve shared so many memories I no longer connect with over and over again. I’ve defended who I was five years ago while still trying to share my identity with her.
At some point, you have to realize you can’t reconcile the two of them.
Eventually, you must recognize that you have to separate yourself from who you were and who you presently exist as. Not because it’s embarrassing (or not totally), but because who you were needs someone to stand up for them.
When I share my past, I am the person I wish I would have had at the time.
I am my own advocate.
I relay the truth with an empathetic and understanding heart. I share her story the way it deserves to be told.
You have to become your own friend before you can become someone else’s.
I’ve allowed more than I should have over my years, and that’s okay. It’s something that I grapple with. As hard as it’s been to remember that, I am reminded every day of my own very simple mantra:
Who I was has made me into who I am, who I am will make me into who I will be, and who I will be will know where I came from.
This rambling is all to say:
Just because it taught you what you didn’t want, doesn’t mean you have to reshape it into something you do. Sometimes shit is just shit. Nothing more, nothing less.
Take a whiff.
Our past experiences aren’t always there to teach you a lesson. Sometimes they’re just a pit stop. I’ve found false love and toxic obsession on the same road I’ve found the most pure and beautiful connection I could ever share with another human being.
Sometimes, sunshine is sunshine.
Sometimes, a black hole is just a black hole.
This is your sign to stop looking for something that isn’t there.
This is your sign to tell it how it is: To say it with your chest.
Here’s to the truth, in all her ambiguity.