The Things I Said and Didn't Say

The summer after I graduated from high school, I set about erasing myself. College was my opportunity to be a new person and meet new people who knew nothing about the failures and fuck-ups of my past, like dating disasters, leaving homework woefully undone, and being too loud or too quiet. I dreamed of friendships like the ones I saw in movies. I wanted St. Elmo’s Fire-type friendships, and on a subconscious level, I didn’t think I could get them as myself.

There was a time, though, before I learned to measure myself against other people’s expectations. In some of my earliest memories, my dad was deep in his doctoral work, and we lived in married student housing on the campus of his university. Life then was wide open and golden; nothing about me needed to be erased. My memories of that time are warm. I spent time on playgrounds or at the table, fingerpainting, with a sense that I belonged just as I was. As I grew up and navigated life, that ease slipped from me, and by the time college arrived, I was convinced I needed to become someone else.

Read the entire essay at Creative Living Diaries.