Defined by Them

All of my life, I have been defined by the people I hang out with. In elementary school, I started out never hanging out with anyone. I would, and I quote, "wander around in long, flowing skirts." Later, I began to hang out with the people who were (and I'm being brutally honest here...) weird and unpopular. In middle school, I still hung out with them, all though I had a few other friends, and I really wasn't much like them at all anymore. Now, in high school, we've started to drift apart. And while in some ways I'm more popular, it occurs to me that I no longer have very many true friends.

I've always acted the way I do based on who my friends are.

And now that I have no real friends (besides, perhaps, Silvi, who I've known since I was 3 months old and is really not the type of person I want to be) it seems like I've lost who I am.

And I don't know how to get myself back.

It's strange, because I wonder if I ever actually knew myself, or if I only knew a reflection of the people that my friends are. I wonder, if everything had gone totally differently, if I had been friends with the cool, popular people right from the start, would I still be the person I am now, whoever that is?

Would I still have fucked up my life in the ways that I did?

I wonder all of these things on an almost daily basis. And it sucks, to wonder if a different life would have made me a better or more successful person.

Because I'm a bitch. I won't lie. I am such a complete bitch. The way I seem to have ditched my old friends--because that is basically what I did-- was a horrible thing to do.

And yes, I did it because I didn't feel like a belonged anymore, but I shouldn't have done it the way that I did. Shouldn't have let myself change so completely that I couldn't even bother to go up to them and say hi every now and then.

And yes, I do sometimes say 'hi' when I pass in the halls, or when I go up to the library to finish homework at lunch.

And yes, I still email them, and go on Buzz and comment on their posts, but it seems like I should be doing even more than that.

It feels like I shouldn't just leave them.

But I don't think that trying to go back would help me, in the long run. Because I need to find myself, and if I try to go back, I'll just end up being defined by them again.

And I can't let that happen to me.