I know you will find this hard to believe, but I was not always the calm, cool, responsible adult you know today. *snicker*
Yes I am a woman with a past. This is not a shock to anyone who knows me well. I don't take out billboards advertising my past exploits but I am certainly not hiding anything. Yes there are things that I am ashamed of. I challenge you to find me one person who has never done anything in their life they are ashamed of. However I believe I am basically a good, decent person. I wish I had been nicer to Paul. I wish I had been nicer to the girl who is now his wife. I wish I hadn't taken my family for granted. I wish I had spent more energy on my relationship with my Auntie. I wish I had not exhausted and wore through the friends who were really there for me. I wish I had not taken advantage of Shannon's kindness and her nurturing spirit. I wish I had made better choices for myself. But I can't change what has past.
Trust me I do have a point I am just coming at it the long way around....
Honest to god I don't remember much about what I was doing at 22 and most of the paper trail from that year went up in the flames of a bonfire earlier this year. I know the year was 1997. I know I finished up my first year of university and I did pretty well. I know that I broke up with a steady, nice, good guy because there as some wrong deep down inside me, a deep dark lack of self worth that was beginning to consume me despite my successes. I know that I met and began a relationship with small g greg, a handsome, smart, funny, deeply self destructive man who already had a girlfriend. (not the first or last time in my life I would be the other woman but that is the tale for another day) I know that small g greg was into exploring his universe with the assistance of Lysergic acid diethylamide and because I really liked him and I wanted him to like me so I attempted to open the doors of preception as well. I know that this was not enough to make small g greg like me sufficiently to leave his girlfriend when she got home from her summer job away. I know that is WAS enough to make that growing self doubt & hate explode into an all consuming rage/depression. I know that the doors of perception left open too often and for too long left room for all the deamons I had been keeping at bay for the preceding 21 years coming marching on through. I know that this led to even more problamatic decision making on my part, stupid decisions, dangerous decisions. I know the decisions I made led to my sexual assault. Not that is was my fault but that the decisions I made led me there. I know that the cumulative result was me chilling out in a mental hospital for the last few months of 1997. What a year when you look at it like that.
If I could just go back and have a word with myself, sit down over a coffee and look her/me right in the eye... If I could just go back and have an hour alone with myself I would have some very sage advice.
(1) I told well me to stick with school no matter how hard things got. School is the silver bullet. School might well be the best thing you can ever do for yourself.
(2) I would tell me to work hard for what I want. That is nice to be taken care of but it feels so much better to take care of yourself.
(3) I would tell myself that it isn't the relationship with Keith that is wrong but how I see myself IN that relationship. Go ahead and break up with him if you don't feel the spark but it is not going to change what is going on inside of you.
(3) I would tell myself that she can do better then small g greg. Actually that is not correct, because it makes it sound like the problem was with him. He was (and still is) a lovely guy. As I said he was very smart, very funny, tender and kind. And he was so beautiful to look at. But as soon as I knew he was involved, seriously involved, with another girl I should have ran as fast as I could have in the other direction. Because I deserve to be more then the other woman, I deserve to be more then a dirty little secret. I deserve more. I wish with all my heart I could make that abundantly clear to my younger self.
(4) This should be obvious but I wish I could explain in the clearest terms possible that our choices have impacts and implications on our lives and on our futures. That is not to say that every decision you ever make will come back to bite you in the ass. But some will and some will bite harder than others and in ways you never anticipated. For example ( I told you I would get to my point eventually) I would love to tell frightened, angry, self destructive me that some day it really is going to get better. Some day with a lot of hard work her life is going to be mostly normal. Someday she is going to have a steady job to take pride in, a house of her very own to take of and grow in and best of all a husband who is a best friend and a partner and someone who REALLY loves her and in turn she really loves and wants to take care of. Some day she is going to have all this and want to protect it by investing in some life insurance. But then she going to answer all their health questions and the result will be that because she had cared more about if a boy liked her then her own future and she (of her own free will - not blaming anyone but me here) took some drugs in 1997, here in 2008 she was refused life insurance and the ability to take care of her family should anything happen to her.
okay. end rant for now. I just wanted to say I was bummed about the life insurance and I wish I had a time machine.
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