There's Nothing Back There.

"Stop looking back - there's nothing back there for you"

That's a quote I heard on CurlyNikki.com a while back. It was about a woman talking about accepting her new life and her future with her family. A lot of times I try to tell myself that looking back into the past will not help me, but thanks to my brain (which produces a lot of dreams based on repressed memories of mine) sometimes I can't help but wonder what if some things had been different?

I work with a girl who is about to graduate from high school, and while I can't help but feel happiness for her, it makes me reflect on who I was when I was her age.

In 2006 I had entered high school with high hopes and aspirations; I was gonna be a radio personality, I knew exactly what college I wanted to go to, where I wanted to live, I knew exactly what I wanted my life to be like. I was making all A's in everything, I had potential. As I worked hard for my future, I was highly dissatisfied with my present life, I was lonely, I felt like I was watching a house party from the outside = everyone having fun, getting into relationships, y'know, things I had never experienced. By the time my sophmore year had started I didn't want to be a radio personality anymore - it seemed like everyone in my family was more into my future than I was, so I changed my mind and afterwards I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I slacked off, stopped caring, focused on my present life.

This pattern lasted from the beginning of my sophmore year to the end of the first semester of my junior year; I was actually having fun and looking forward to going to school every day. But my grades started to suffer horribly: my GPA fell from 3.0 to a 2.6 and I didn't care because I thought that for once I should focus on me and making myself happy.

By the time senior year arrived I was a burnout -  I had stopped trying to be friends with everyone and started to carry around a "fuck it" mentality. I missed school a lot, slacked off, why? because I didn't care - I didn't know what I was doing after high school and even if I did I was too dumb to really follow up on it. It wasn't until 3 months prior to graduation did I realize that I too, could go to college, and would you believe it, my grades revived themselves. Sadly, it wasn't enough to carrry my GPA along from 2 years of slack.

Basically these past few weeks I have been really confused about things. I have been thinking about people I used to know and love, things I did, things I wore (haha clearly) and what if things had been different? Lately I've been feeling nothing but guilt and regret not because of what I did, but who I tried to be. I tried to be someone else in the past- I had many personalities and If I had just been myself and stopped trying to fit in and care what everyone else had thought about me then maybe I would've came out alright, but it's all my fault; I am the way I am because I've never been happy with myself whatsoever.

I'm not sure what to do right now. It's always been hard for me to keep looking forward because I can't come to terms with my past.