Growing Pains

Um wow. So I just cracked open my old diary from high school that ended around my junior year..and..wow! That was a weeeiiirdd walk down memory lane slash peek into the can of worms that was my 15-16-17 year old brain! I was a weird kid. Okay who am I kidding, AM a weird kid! What was really kind of interesting to me was the number of times I wrote about feeling depressed, sad, shy, misunderstood, etc..or equal to that, the number of times I would come back to my diary after a long time and writing about having a “revelation” about myself or realizing something about the way I was. Granted, a lot of times I only wrote in my diary when I was feeling lost or insecure or whatever so in a way it is a bit of an unbalanced look into my life 3 years ago, but I can only imagine the number of times I felt that way and I didn’t write about it…By the way, I would just like to take this opportunity to make a note to myself that next time I need to start a fire I already have a little kindling to get started with!!

I deleted about 20 or 30 “friends” from Facebook today from high school that I never talked to and really only knew by name or face. It was kind of empowering! I mean I have 451 “friends,” only about 20 of which I actually talk to on a regular basis…about 100 of which I’ve probably ever had a significant conversation with recently. If I had started my Facebook during college I would probably not be doing that right now. 

So I would like to note that right now in my life, I feel more comfortable with myself than I’ve ever been before. I’m coming to terms with who I am and I’m seeing the things that make me different as things to embrace, not try to change. I can be shy, I can be quiet, and I can need my time alone, but does that mean I need to try to make myself more outgoing, talk more or spend more time with people? Uhh..nope! It just means that I need to allow myself to be those things and enjoy what I’m doing when I’m feeling particularly quiet rather than try to call and text everyone in my phone book or sit on facebook chat for a couple hours trying to talk to everyone who’s online.. Cus it’s weird how it works this way, but when I’m feeling like that, somehow a lot of people aren’t online and won’t text me back.. It’s when you try to force yourself to be something you think you should be that you’ll always end up being dissatisfied, but if you start to accept yourself and love yourself and stop trying to be the person who you have this image of in your head, you’ll finally start to be happy.

And a lot of people have been right, for a long time. Over a year, in fact. I’ve struggled so hard to tell myself that I can have it both ways, their way and my way, but I can’t. They’re right - he is poison to me. He’s been subtly influencing my life for over 2 years; in the last year without even realizing it. And I realized this weekend I was talking about him and his part in my life NOW like he still is a part of it!!! Like Allison, whaaaaattt?!? You’ve been broken up for more than a year and you’re still in love with him? and you’re still talking about him like you broke up a month ago?? Yeaaah..that needs to stop. (You didn’t even DATE for a year..) It’s been waaaay too long. I’m like a bad dieter — I tell myself I’m not going to talk to him, but if he calls me I’ll answer, or I text him things, or e-mail him things — like if someone else hands me a Big Mac it’s okay, or this one little piece of chocolate won’t hurt (and then I proceed to eat the whole bag over the next 2 days). It’s really not doing me any good to text him. Or email him. Or answer him if he texts me. Or calls me. Does he (or did he, rather) still call me and email me because he liked to make sure I still liked him? because he liked to reaffirm occasionally that he had me on a little leash by the heart? I don’t know. I would like to hope not, because I would like to think of him as better than that, but to be honest it doesn’t really matter all that much. Why?, I can hear the little pesky voice in the back of my head asking. Well, because we’re done with him now, I’m answering. Now we are really and truly letting go of him, once and for all. Because we believe that there are other people out there, other people who will give you everything you had with him AND. MORE. They will be all the wonderful things about him and they will treat you like you are the most wonderful, perfect person for them, too. You want that back, you do. And you’re only kidding yourself if you continue to think that you’ll have a future with him - because he doesn’t. want. to. be. with. you. The end.

On a different note, I’ve realized I need to expect less of people. I really do expect too much of my friends or my sort-of friends and my not-even friends. Like one good friend in particular, I’ve realized that I’ve been having too high of standards for for the past 2 years I’ve known them, and then ended up being disappointed when they continually act the way they do. I want them to be the kind of friend that I have this grand image of for them in my head, but then..they aren’t. They are only themselves. And so I’m always disappointed with them because I’m trying to be friends with the idea of this person I have in my head. It doesn’t work. Very, very few people have come close to that person I imagine, and there are really only two I can think of. One of which was the subject of the above paragraph, so really only one I’m going to continue to communicate with on a regular basis :) But that is all really besides the point, I think, because I just need to realize that save for those two aforementioned people, most of the time I need to start appreciating people for who they actually are and the kind of friend they actually can be. I think I’ll be much happier in the end. And maybe even feel like I have more friends than I did before, because I’ll stop rejecting people for not being “good enough” for my standards. You just gotta lower your standards. Then people will always exceed them* :)

And on that note, I think I’m gonna go paint :)

*This is in reference to everybody else, of course! Cus you gotta have high standards for yourself, obvs!