Don't take your pleasure from my pain...

I had a birthday over the summer, and as a result, I'm now 33 years old. Since I got sick at the beginning of the year, and off and one since then, I keep thinking about the past. My memory is always going to be spotty, two surgeries on your brain will do that to someone. But the truth is, it occurred to me at my birthday, there was no one there who knew me before I was 20.

And the reason for that, because in high school I actually *did* have friends, is that the "friends" I had, have all decided that they hate me now. Not one single solitary one of them has ever explained to me what it was that I did. One of them, Jerusha, told me that I nearly ruined her life...and when I asked what it was that I *DID*, she refused to explain. I remember that she liked to party, had a drinking problem, and hated her parents...none of which had anything to do with me.

I'm fully aware that before that first tumor was diagnosed and removed, I was irrational, unreliable, and difficult to put it mildly. But I was also the girl who has completely miserable, most of the time. The one who ran away from home, because it was *that bad*, and not a single one of any of my "friends" asked why it was that I had no free time, and wasn't allowed to do any of the things that their parents allowed them do.

And now, the people who I actually *did* do something that might have hurt then, those people have been apologized to, and at least I attempted to make amends.

And yet, most of the people who 'knew me when', continue to hate me. People who take glee or some sort of satisfaction to continue to spread rumors and talk crap about me, for things that happened 15 years ago. I have a reputation for being a god-awful backstabbing person, someone not to be trusted, and who would ruin people by association.

Someone who was once a friend said that they could see me running toward a disaster, and didn't want to be caught in the fallout. What made me wonder about Sara was that she, also, never bothered to see if there was something *wrong*, that might have been causing me to do so many completely off the wall things.

As it turned out, in 2004, I learned that my lack of impulse control, my inability to be rational, to lose my temper at the least provocation, all of that was because I had a lump the size of a golf ball on three sections of my brain. As soon as all the extra pressure was removed, my entire personality changed, literally overnight.

And yet, the trash-talking persists. People talk to *other people*, not to *ME*, and they seem to enjoy insuring that my life will continue to be difficult. This town is too small for me not to run into people, virtually anywhere I go.

My life was difficult when I was younger. I was angry and unhappy, and when I finally grew up and managed to put myself back together, even if it took brain surgery to do it, I discovered that my past will apparently never be left in peace.

I've gone through hell, still not exactly living in a rose garden now, but it still won't let it rest in peace. I have *earned* that right, and yet it remains.

I just wish they would stop using me as a way to make themselves feel better about their lives. Wish they'd forget they ever knew me, or knew anything about me, because the choices I made, and the person I was, she doesn't even exist anymore, and hasn't existed for a long time.

Grow up, and leave me alone.