When I was growing up, I had to deal with a lot of hardships in my family. But through it all, no one worried about me. Or, at least, no one expressed that they were worried about me. And I did fine. I was a good student and an overall good kid. Not that I was perfect, not by any means! But overall, pretty good. I think at some point people just expected that of me. And they quit paying attention.
I got mixed up in some craziness. I was acting out, doing a ton of drugs, lost a bunch of weight, and had mysterious scars all over my arms. Still, no one seemed to notice. I moved out of the house and cleaned up my act a little. But I had quit college and was still partying a lot. Not so much with the drugs anymore, but I was going out drinking more nights than I wasn't. And still, no one seemed to notice.
Then I really did clean up my act and went back to college. I threw myself in full force; full-time classes, extracurriculars, research, the whole none, still while I was working a full-time day job. And suddenly everyone was concerned! "Is Gina ok?" "How will she manage?" "Can she maintain a C average?" What the fuck?!?!? Hey people, I think you're all a little delayed on the appropriate time to be concerned about me!! Not only was I "ok," but I graduated near the top of my class with honors.
I took some time off to gain some experience in my field of choice, planning to go back to school after about a year. Everyone got worried again. "Will she really go back?" But I did. And not only did I go back, but again, I am excelling. During this time I did have an emotional setback (hence the first 5 posts on this blog). And although some people in my life were concerned about me, and rightly so, these were not the people who had previously failed to notice me or had worried at the wrong times. These were people relatively new to my life. So, the people that had failed to notice my struggles previously in my life had once again failed to notice.
Now I finally feel like I am starting to feel like me again. So, of course, there are people who are just now expressing concern. "I'm worried about you." "You're drinking too much." "You're not connecting with your emotions." "You're not letting yourself grieve."
Grieve?!?! You don't think I know how to grieve?!?!? I feel like I have practiced grieving for my entire life! I spent three of the past 6 months crying and you people never noticed! So if I want to go out and drink and disconnect from my emotions a little, I think that's perfectly fine! Yes, I have made some errors in judgement recently, but I am not 16 anymore. And furthermore, you people didn't notice what was going on in my life at 16 anyway, so why bother now that I'm an adult?
And, yes, I know that I don't have the greatest track record with guys. So when you find out that I have recently spoken to a person whom you all consider to be the biggest mistake I ever made, please restrain yourselves from commenting. Try and trust that I am a grown up. Try and trust that I have learned from the events of my past. Try and trust that if I managed to get through the past (almost) 30 years relatively unscathed, that I can make it through the next 30 just as successfully. And for once, could you please just try to be open minded and accepting of who I am and who I choose to be.
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