For the past several months, I’ve been doing a major re organization of my things. This includes getting rid of things I don’t want or need anymore. I always do this, but this year I decided to focus as much of my effort on getting rid of things I know I don’t want or need, yet I kept.
Among the many things I found were things I didn’t know I still had. Some of these things made me happy to see again, but there were others that didn’t. Seeing them brought back bad memories, especially in high school. High school, and school in general, wasn’t fun. I didn’t enjoy school until I decided to attend schools that my family preferred me not to. These school were further away from where I lived. There, I still had problems, but it was mostly the kind of common problems that people have after they left a community they knew all their lives for a new and unfamiliar place. Even those problems weren’t as bad as the problems I had going to school where I lived growing up.
Today, I still live in the area where I grew up. I had intentions to leave for good, but health problems and other issues prevented my dreams from coming true. Going through all the stuff I still had, but didn’t want to keep, from my childhood and teen years has been hard on me.
Right now, I’m on a break from cleaning. I needed it partly because I needed to relax after the flood of bad memories came back to me. The other part is because I’m physically exhausted from working so hard! The thing is, after remembering all these memories, I decided to spend my time off doing things I wanted to do as a teenager, but couldn’t for a variety of reasons.
The first thing I did was take naps. I’m not trying to brag, but lately I’ve had the time to sit down and take naps. Taking naps has helped me feel better and let my body heal after working so hard to move things. Resting is something I wish I could’ve done as a teenager. I believe most if not all teens want, and need, to sleep. I was a teenager that needed sleep, but didn’t actually sleep. Doing it now was helpful in so many different ways.
The next thing I did was read. And I didn’t just read. I read whatever I wanted. This lead me to reawaken my old love of reading manga and comic books. When I was in school, I read whatever the teachers wanted me to. Now, I can read whatever I want whenever I want. I am also excited about reading classic literature that I didn’t in school. For all my years of school, I never had to read adventure novels. So, I began to read my favorite action stories in their original novelization form. These include The Mark of Zorro, Captain Blood, Treasure Island, and The Sea Hawk, just to name a few!
The final thing I did that I couldn’t do in school was focus on my hobbies. These hobbies include cooking, baking, sewing, knitting, and drawing. My school didn’t have home economics. I remember the school did away with it due to the belief it would discourage women to become unambitious in studying or becoming anything but a homemaker. (This makes me wonder what those teachers and other school officials that campaigned for this would think of today’s cottage core hobbies and aesthetics or what kind of activities to do while in the COVID-19 lockdowns!)
All these things, as well as other activities such as writing, watching old movies I like, and doing general home maintenance has made me feel better… and a little rebellious! I noticed that, after years of living in the area where I grew up as an adult, I feel like I haven’t allowed my true nature to show through. I never fit into the area, but in order to better protect myself from bullies, I hid some of my hobbies and things I do for fun. I’m an adult now, and a 30 something adult as well, but I still fear the people I was afraid of growing up. Today, things have either changed or are in the process of changing. New people live in the area. There are new needs and goals for the area. And I’m a different person as well. I understand why I hid myself so much, but I also know that I need to protect myself from getting hurt. Growing up I didn’t know how to find a balance. Today, I see there can be a balance. I just need to pursue it.
How to pursue this balance is something I’ve been pondering over. I believe it is dependent on what kind of situation I’m in. For me, in my everyday life means finding clothes I can wear while working, yet is something I enjoy. I usually wear t-shirts, so finding t-shirts with nice pictures is a small yet big step in showing off more of my personality and tastes. I started doing this a few years ago, but after seeing the state of my shirts has reenforced the need to find more shirts I enjoy wearing.
Trying to move on from the past is never easy, but finding ways to expressing myself in a positive light has been something that I like to do to make myself feel better. The people that hurt me wanted me to only look down on myself. Today, I see them as nothing more than people who have tried with all their might to give themselves self worth through hurting others. It’s a very sad way of living and, even though there was a life when I felt empathy for them, I now see them as people who will never change. No matter how serious the situation, they still depend on the same old mindset to get them through life. This is why I also see them as people that will never adapt to whatever life throws at them nor will ever want to do something with their lives that requires them to stop thinking of themselves differently. These are things I am trying to prevent from happening to myself.
I am not happy to live in the area where I grew up. In fact, I’m still really enraged I still need to live here. Yet, I am trying to improve my own self worth and change the way I see myself in order to be happier. I may not have control over where I live, but I have control over what I say about myself. I also have control over the things from my past I keep and surround myself with. This is why so many things that remind me of sad times in my life are leaving my house.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!
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