On should-haves, why-didn'ts, and what-ifs

I reread my last post this weekend. It's been bugging me. As I mentioned in it, what I published here was actually a rewrite of my first draft. In rewriting it, a lot of my original message was lost. I didn't realize that until I read over it again. I'm sure that anyone else who read it was able to understand the gist of what I was saying, but it still feels lacking to me.

In my original post, I discussed all the things I have wished to change over the years. Obviously my health and negative school experiences are at the top of the list, but there have also been times when I wished I could fundamentally change my entire person; I wanted to stop liking all the music and TV shows and whatnot that I liked and start liking what everyone else liked, because I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to be “normal”. And I tended to dwell on thoughts like that.

A couple of weeks ago when I said I've come to the conclusion that I don't need to change, those are the things I was talking about. I don't need to listen to the Top 40, or stop watching cheesy sci-fi shows with terrible special effects, or fawn over all of the currently-hip celebrities. You can like what you like and I'll like what I like. Who I am is who I am.

Likewise, there is no point in obsessing over past events. Even if I had a time machine that could take me back to my first year of ninth grade, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from getting sick. Even if I reacted to the situation in a different manner, I wouldn't be able to control how the school administration handled it. I wouldn't be able to change my friends' responses, and there's no way of guaranteeing that I could have prevented them from drifting out of my life. I can't change what's in the past, and even if I could, I really shouldn't. All of these happenings are what shaped me into the person I am today.

When I said I was done wanting to change, I meant I was done wanting to be a different person living a different life. I am still very much in favor of change in the form of personal growth; that's pretty much the whole point of this blog. Growth is all I've been striving for in the past sixteen months, and it's what I plan to keep striving for. I believe there will always be room for improvement of character. What I'm done with is the should-haves and the why-didn'ts and the what-ifs. All I can do—all anyone can do, for that matter—is play with the hand that's been dealt, because it was dealt for a reason. The dealer peeked at the cards before He passed them out.

I feel better now, having clarified. Although I'm pretty sure the clarification was unnecessary for anyone reading. Oh well. It's my blog and I'll ramble if I want to. Haha.

On cynicism, self-reflection, and silver linings

So. Funny story. I started writing a post last night, but I was half asleep at the time and got interrupted by a knock at my door, so I stopped writing mid-sentence and did not resume until almost twenty-four hours later, at which point I had sort of forgotten where I was even going with the post. Here it is twenty-six hours from the time I originally started writing. I have read and reread my finished post—which I have open in a separate document as I type these very words—and have come to the conclusion that it's rubbish. It sounds very contrived, which is not what I wanted at all. (Apparently my inner voice turns into a stuffy fuddy-duddy when I'm exhausted.) However, I still want to post something and share what's been on my mind lately, so I'm going to give you the SparkNotes version.

The past seven years made me quite a cynical person, and I've been trying to change that in the past several months.

I was miserable and lonely in high school. I won't go into detail here, but I have written about it in previous posts. What's relevant to this post is that I was isolated more often than not. So frequently I wished not only that my situation would be different but that I would be different. I just wanted to be normal. I wanted to fit in. Because on top of all of my health issues, I am what most would (and have, to my face) call weird.

I wasn't cognizant of it at the time, but all those months and years I spent in isolation weren't just a rough patch in my life; they were a formative period. Since I started this blog, I have been really big on introspection and trying to figure out why I am the way I am. In my mind, I have tended to focus on why I developed my negative qualities, like my cynicism and social anxiety. I have wished that I could be different in those respects too. I never realized that almost every. single. good. thing. in my life is there because of the exact same events that brought the undesirable things. Some are more indirectly related than others, which is why it took me so long to see it, but that doesn't change the fact.

As I said earlier, I have been trying really hard to change my way of thinking. I have been constantly reminding myself that I don't need to be different. The things that have happened to me had a reason for happening. They made me what I am. And were I other than I am, I would not be myself. That means that everything in my life would be different, good and bad, and I know that it isn't worth trading the positive to get rid of the negative. Especially since I have so many wonderful things in my life right now.