So Far from Where I Started...

Today, I started reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Yes, I realize that I'm reading it about ten years too late. However, it has me thinking about who I was in high school and who I am now.

I used to be incredibly shy. I have an introverted personality now, but I have a great deal more confidence than I used to have. I need plenty of time alone and a little time to adjust my thought patterns before socializing, and large groups of people other than my close friends sometimes wear me out. However, I have a capacity to enjoy social situations, even meeting new people, in a way I never could as a kid. While I need to be alone to recharge, even away from my family and my best friends, social engagement makes me feel wonderfully alive, where in high school I often just felt scared.

My shy, quiet high school personality allowed me to think in ways that others at my school didn't. Though I started high school with the conservative Christian outlook with which I had been raised in my church, it didn't last. I did not understand the process as it happened, but I look back on it with the understanding gained by watching others struggling with deconversion. As I listened, learned, and observed, I found that my religion did nothing but add to my sense of (undeserved) guilt and judgmentality. Yet, knowing that I was no longer a Believer made me feel guilty, as well. I began to show glimmers of the open mind that is now, perhaps, my defining characteristic outside of my intellect. University life cemented this as a compassionate and loving perspective.

I have bouts of shyness and intense insecurity that will probably plague me for the rest of my life. There are certain spotlights I will never be able to stand in. However, I recognize my needs for both isolation and social engagement, and I'm not terrified anymore. As for religion and politics, I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum from where I started. I'm a progressive, a secular humanist, and an atheist. I don't judge people from living in ways that make them happy as long as they aren't hurting anyone. The girl that grew so much in four years of high school is now a woman who has grown so much more in the six years since.

Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in my current problems that I forget to take stock of where I started. I have to give myself credit for what matters most: the changes that have made me a good person, and those that have allowed me to live in the world more that I ever imagined I would.