Joking vs mockery, respect or disrespect?

[thesummerqueen]

I despise my past self. It makes me strive to be better.

This.

To be honest I can't even remember where this was going anymore.

Also this.



Somewhat off topic, but I think you'll agree:

David and I were talking about an article a friend posted (she's a youth psychologist) and my imminent 10 year high school reunion. I'm not keen to go to the reunion. The plan right now is to drive up anyway because friends who live across the country are likely to be in town, so it's the perfect time to grab lunch, but I have no plan to go to whatever "ceremony" they have going on. Anyone I still want to see or be in touch with, I am in contact with via some route through the internet. I have witnessed their changes and growth, and I know where they're at in life at this moment. No need to be voyeuristic on all the other numbnuts I went to school with.

Which brings me about to the point we were discussing. The article's premise was that (basically) we never truly leave high school. For some reason, whatever roles we took on there supposedly define us and we very easily slip back into those roles. And then there are these reunions where we can go back and see how everyone turned out after so much time. I've heard from older friends that the same old cliques are there.

And then you have those fuckers who say "high school was the best time of my life."

Who are you people? I dislike who I was in high school. I disliked many of the people in my high school. I wasn't part of any group or clique, but wandered aimlessly with a shifting group of other wanderers who didn't fit in either. I was nerdy enough to talk to smart kids, but not socially inept. I was in the art classes, and friends with people in the drama club, and friends with musicians, and friends with popular people. High school was a way-point, not a defining portion of my life. I couldn't wait to get out and get a job. Then I got one and started making some money. My early 20's were incredibly formative - I learned more about history through my own reading choices, I suddenly became steeped in skepticism, I moved out so I didn't have to play at being religious anymore. I was thrust into a world of being on my own, being single, treading the waters of criticism and flattery alike. I became me. Note - I wasn't at college either. David agrees with this - he said the years after he quit college and got into the workforce also honed everything he is.

I don't know why people keep looking to the past like it was in some way better than now. Maybe you have more worries now, but you have more freedom to choose how you solve those worries. Being a kid sucked ass.

Somewhat more on topic: I had friends, teachers, and parents who criticized things about me - sometimes even mockingly. Some of these criticisms did some damage. Some of them, on the other hand, were instrumental in teaching me how to hone my own self as much as possible, because not everyone was going to agree with me, not everyone was going to call me a clever girl, and not all of my ideas were going to be perfect, nor was everything going to be easy. The point was not to know everything, or to be perfect, but to be constantly improving, and to know where to go to find the right information. And realizing that undid the damage that the bad criticism wrought.

And realizing THAT also told me that not all adults deserve the respect your parents try to beat into you. Some of them are just as silly at 40 as they were at 14, because they haven't really changed. And I'm not ashamed to mock them for it, because stagnation creates rot and death.