15 May 2009

Rationalizing

This afternoon, on the phone, my sister said that she thought I was kind of a snob in high school.

She's probably right. I was skinny, underdeveloped, didn't take very good care of myself, wore unfashionable clothes, profoundly lonely, and tried to make up for it by showing off my superior intelligence. I don't remember being overtly mean to people on more than a couple of occasions, but by the time I had reached tenth grade, I'd developed a pretty prickly shell, which was the first thing people saw. Mostly from being teased for years and made to feel outcast by popular girls and unpopular boys alike. Unpopular wouldn't have even described me--I wasn't even on the social radar screen.

Yes, high school was not my high point.

Had she told me that just a few years ago, I would have reacted differently. I would have been defensive, and I would have tried to explain my behavior and find someone to blame for it.

But now I'm staring down the barrel of thirty, and I'm starting to feel differently. Twenty is when you blame your mother for everything that's wrong with you. Thirty is when you own up and assume the consequences for your own behavior. Thirty is when you stop caring about what happened in high school. Thirty is when you move on.

Looking at it this way, thirty can't come fast enough.

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