Five days till I'm back at home away from this place and back into my old life. Which, in retrospect, I don't think is bad. People tell you that you shouldn't look back, that it's your past for a reason, but sometimes you have to go back because you got lost in your present while looking for your future. Like me.
I used to have this thrill, this certain type of drive to make something with my life. Possibly because I didn't feel like I had a purpose to live for the longest time. I got to a point in my life where I decided that I did. I needed to continue on for the sake of the normal average person. I needed to find the way to make my life better so that there would be hope for people like me.
I was a leader. I was against use of drugs, tobacco, anything harmful to your body. I experimented, nothing bad happened and I was okay with that. That's when I lost myself. When I started following instead of being the followed. I was following for all the wrong reasons.
I started to act like them, think like them, be them. That was never me. I was never one to blend into a niche and be happy. No, I was there to show people that it's okay on who you are and to be proud and confident about it.
I lost that.
I got lost in the world of drugs, underground raves, a new scene to start a new life with. I had a new slate and I could be whoever I wanted to be. That's when I lost me.
It was all fun. I'm not regretting what I did at all. I'm regretting how I acted about it. I'm regretting on how it took control over my life.
No, not the drugs or the alcohol, the acceptance. I was finally cool now! People wanted to talk to me, wanted me to come to their parties, wanted me to hang out with them. For crying out loud people tried so many different crazy things to get into the group I got in so easily.
That's when I started slipping. That's when I had to work for the acceptance and rank, yet when I did I got no where. Which is weird, to be honest, because we all thought of each other as family and we couldn't go days without seeing each other. Yet, when the time came, we put each other in their place. If you weren't one of the originals closest friends, who weren't as important. I'm lucky to have even gotten into the group I did, now that I look back on it. And that makes me sad, and disappointed in what I had become.
I was no longer a leader, and I accepted that. Maybe subconsciously I had grown tired of being the leader. I tried to get people to meet new friends, I tried to get them to go to a house party with new people, I tried to get them to do things but instead I was put in my place and accepted what they wanted to do.
I lost myself.
I had so much to say, but no one to listen.
Even now I feel like there isn't anyone to really listen to my side of things. I am the listener, and that's how it's been all my life.
It's now that I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being left in the shadows, feeling as if I didn't have anything interesting to offer because I didn't come from a crazy background. I didn't enjoy getting so messed up all the time. I was a state officer of Family, Career, Community Leaders of America. I was one of the original founders of the current reACT Core Team. But that's not special where I was at. None of it was. This wasn't high school. Now no one cares if you can make a difference in the world cause the world is already too fucked up to care.
That night on the bridge, when I wanted to jump off and kill myself. That's all I could think of. They didn't need anymore leaders where I was, they had all they needed. I was just a filler to make their lives more interesting and yeah that was good and all at first.
But then I stepped back and saw that I was broken, and that they were broken, and that I wanted to heal myself but I couldn't. I couldn't because I felt that if I did, that I would leave them behind and they would hate me. I didn't want anyone to hate me. I just wanted someone to say I love you, I care about you, I will always be there. Instead of hearing that more than I should've, I was saying that more than I should've.
I was there to believe in everyone, yet I felt like no one believed in me.
It's weird how all this emotion that you pent up for so long finally comes back to you when you finally realized how you fucked up your own life. I don't blame them for how I turned out. It's not their fault, and I don't like to accuse people. It was my decision to stay and my decision to fuck up my own life because of that.
It's not their faults. They brought me in and we had a great time. They showed me so much stuff and I learned so much from all of them and I thank them. Yet, in the end I just wanted acceptance too much and that's what made me suffer. My naiveté to being apart of something, when I myself was already apart of something. Something greater than drama filled drunk nights at a cold apartment. I was apart of me.
But I didn't see that then. All I saw was the opportunity to be wanted and accepted.
I think that maybe people should stop focusing on how they appear, or how they want to appear to others, and focus on how they appear to themselves. That was something we all lied to ourselves about. We all told ourselves that we were comfortable with who we were, but on the inside we were all plagued with the ugliness we actually felt.
