Times passed

A few days ago, a few years ago.

Where do I even start? Of course I'm not that girl, that impetuous, irrational, angry girl that I was when I was twenty. How could I be? It's been a decade since that time, and even I mellow to a certain extent with that much time passing. But I don't suppose that it's just that. I was so very young. Not that I thought I was young then. Of course not. I thought I knew everything then. Who doesn't, at that age? I thought I was invincible. I was young and wild and free. It was so recent, the freedom from my parents' house. And I was still so angry. I was angry at everything, it seemed. Not that I ever said that, not out loud. But it was in my actions. I never took anyone's advice, even if I should have. And I would always strike first, to hurt, to harm, to insure that no one could hurt me.

I felt I had been hurt enough. If you were going to leave me, it would be on my terms. If you didn't love me, I didn't care anyhow, so it wouldn't matter. Be my plaything, nothing more. I loved nothing and no one. It was such bullshit. All of it, such a lie. And so few people even knew it. That bravado served me well. Serves me well.

And I'm tired of it. Tired of the pain. Tired of a mask of not showing anything. And it's become my default expression. It isn't even a mask anymore, it simply is who I am. Even when I want to cry, I sometimes can't now. For the tears to come, the pain has to be so completely overwhelming that I can't take anymore, and then it crushes me. And I can't breathe.

Perhaps I do have value. Perhaps my value is in the fact that I survived. That I looked around, and once I got through everything, and I finally managed to stand again, I helped others. Whether I value me for myself, perhaps the value is there just the same. Because after that time when I was twenty, when I was so horrible, and I did so much damage. After I was damaged so badly through my youth. I did come out the other side, and in doing so, I did for others what I had wished someone could have done for me. And I did that for a long, long time.

Even now, I still look around, and I do for others what I would wish would be done for me. I do for small ones what I would automatically wish and hope someone would do for my daughter, if she were in any given situation. At some point, I realized that what I am, and what I became at some point was a person who tends to treat others the way I wish I was treated, even when that isn't necessarily the case.

I can be spiteful sometimes still. But these days, it tends to be more of a thought about being spiteful, rather than an actual action. Something I sit and ponder, not something I *do*. And then I go back to reality. I could be that person again, I suppose. The person who could and did hurt the people around me, because it kept me safe from anyone being able to injure me. But I don't want to. I'd rather deal with the pain myself, than inflict it on anyone else.

I'm stronger than that, now. I don't need to hurt anyone else. Let them hurt themselves. I can deal on my own now.