IT'S MY LIFE!!

"What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth." ~Jewish Proverb

It's always baffled and amazed me how at one moment you can be doing something, reading something or listening to something and then a day later, maybe not even that long you realize just exactly why you had been doing that something, reading that particular thing, or listening… and every time it happens it just makes my head spin! My head is still spinning from this little quirk of fate…

Last night I decided to rummage around through some old boxes and get rid of some things I stumbled upon some old high school nostalgia, ribbons, awards, and several hundreds of folded pieces of paper. Captivated by an opportunity to take a trip down memory lane I began to open each carefully folded note I found myself back in high school…the good, the bad, and the ugly. I laughed at the dramatic flare each of these notes had so that I, the reader would know the extreme importance of their dire situation. Admittedly, I even became choked up, at one point, recollecting the emotional fervor certain events once had in my life and in the lives of my closest friends. I was glad I decided to take on this conquest to relive those bittersweet memories of high school. What we learn from our past affects our future. But the words quickly became redundant and not surprisingly. After all, in a town like Hendersonville there are only so many guys you can crush, there are only so many girls you can viciously insult, and if there is absolutely nothing else to discuss, there are only so many boring classes complain about. So, I put the notes back into the old shoe box and went to bed.

Throughout the day today, I emailed friends, sent messages or comments on their MySpace pages sharing my discovery of our archived glory days. Disappointingly, my fun was interrupted with cruel reminder of why I made the decision a long time ago to leave high school behind me, grow up and mature, but most importantly ON! Obviously not everyone made the same decision I did. Oh, they may have put their memories away but sadly, they did not move on. No, these pathetic sewer rats chose another route. They chose to maintain an immature child-like mentality and focus on the lives of other people, because their sad little life is so sorry it's not even worth THEIR own thought. It's simply unlucky for those of us who have chosen to leave Never Never Land that we have to co-exist with these disgusting rats.

Most people would advise you to forget about their craven remarks. Simply forget the lies that continue to ooze out of their jealous mouths made silent only when thinking about their own self-disgust. It seems simple enough. They're not worth it, so why waste your time. "He who angers you has power over you", a friend once told me…although I'm pretty sure she got it from someone else. It's good advice, and what I normally would do. Instead I took a moment to decide which was more important to me: publicly expressing my feelings of complete disgust with the constant slander of people who are actually happy with who they are and the decisions they have made or once again letting it roll off my back as if there is something to hide. I chose to write. Do not be mistaken about my reasons for writing this. I am not writing this with an expectation of change, sadly a person who would knowingly commit such an appalling offense again another person will most likely never change. I am instead writing this to say "Go ahead, keep talking. But while you're still making your cowardly remarks behind my back, that still puts me in front of you. So while you're staring at my back I'll continue to learn from my past mistakes, I'll continue to challenge and improve myself, and if you close your spiteful lips, just for one moment, you might just learn something… from ME.

**I wrote this several months ago after an old friend sent me an email with concerns about things she had heard about choices I was making. I had originally written her to share some memories of how ridiculous we were in high school. I was hoping for a positive response and possibly reconnecting, since we had lost touch over the past few years… Instead, I received an attack against how I am choosing to live my life which I was extremely offended and wrote this...