How I Got To Be Who I Am… Maybe

Like it or not, we are largely shaped by other people. It’s kind of like modeling clay: the basic substance of what you are comes from you, but all your relationships and interactions push and pull at you, take bits away, add bits here and there, cut deep grooves, form nice curves with the thumb.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately on how I got to be who I am, and the roles that the people I dated played at each stage in my life. In the process of getting older (and hopefully a little wiser) and coming to terms with who I am, I have learned to appreciate each of my past experiences as valuable in some way, even those that were at the time unbearably difficult or complex. As they say, “hell builds character.” Hell is quite a learning process.

While the details may fade with time (which is probably a good thing in some ways), I don’t want to entirely forget how I got to be where I am. Both Doc and I think that if we hadn’t had the particular life experiences that we each had, both good and bad, we wouldn’t have been in the right place at the right time when we found each other. And up until I started this blog in 2002, I never successfully kept a diary, so my memories and experiences have up until now remained exclusively in my brain.

I’ve been debating for a few days whether or not to even post these stories. Will anyone besides me even care about this stuff? Probably not. Is it important enough for me to write about? I think it’s just like any other story in my life: it happened, so it’s fair game for an essay.

I’ve tried not to romanticize the past, since as everyone knows it’s easy to remember the good things and gloss over the bad, but instead to tell it the way it was, filtered through the crystallizing lens of time and hindsight.

Also: I have no regrets. This is important, and it’s the best possible outcome.

Stories to follow.