letting go

well, this is certainly been an experience.

i've learned a lot in the last little bit of my summer. i found a friend in someone i've known for a year and had never really spoken to, and i got a whole lot closer to friends i had never really been close to before. and in conversations with some of those people, old friends that i've been close to for a while, and a few conversations with God, i've learned one really important thing...

it's time to let go.

for the last few years, i've been carrying around a lot of emotional baggage. two of them have been haunting me more than others. one was the memory of all the things that happened between me and my close friends in the past, and i started figuring out that the way i treat my friends now and the things i do aren't anything like i want them to be, and i learned that the reason why is that i keep letting my past control my present. i assume that what happened before will happen again, so i just walk into things expecting them to suck, and that's what happens.

the second thing i've been carrying around is what happened to me my senior year. without going into grand detail, i was basically stabbed in the back by the two adults in my life that i would have trusted with absolutely anything. and it ruined me. not that i was stabbed in the back, but that this time they were adults and they were supposed to have the answers and be there to put me together when other kids stab me in the back. and ever since then, i've been so angry with them that i haven't even been able to be myself because everything just brings back that anger.

and honestly, i'm just tired of being angry all the time.

it doesn't make them any less wrong, because even after a year, i'm convinced that i wasn't the one to blame for all of this. yes, there were things i did wrong, but i didn't deserve what i got, and this shouldn't be my fault like they're playing it out to be. and i tried to fix things, but they won't have it. they just want to act like it never happened, but it did happen and this is something i want to talk about, not ignore.

i just can't be angry anymore.

so i prayed about it and asked God to take over and help me to completely let go of all the crap that i keep holding onto for no reason. and you know, a crazy thing happened when i let go of all that anger and that fear: my life got better. it's not like everything was magically okay, but i was okay with what happened. the things that i went through still sucked, but my attitude toward them was completely different, and i learned to just let them be behind me and not deal with them anymore.

i haven't been myself for a while now, and ever since i let go of everything, i've found out where the old me disappeared to. underneath all that anger and fear was the person i used to be: happy, outgoing, and most of the time completely stupid. and i couldn't be happier to have him back.

and this morning i was reading a book called velvet elvis by rob bell, and he was talking about this perfect idea of who we need to be, the thing that pushes us into doing things because we think we can handle it. i don't think i could explain it nearly as well as he does in the book, so you should just read it. but i learned that my next life goal is simply this: kill my superwhatever.

i don't have to be this perfect person in my head. i don't have to be there for everyone. i don't have to major in everything i think i can major in. i don't have to make eight figures a year. i don't need to please everyone. i don't have to say yes to anything and everything that comes my way.

i've got to kill my superwhatever, and i've got to kill it soon.