Ch-Ch-Changes

Hey internet!

Alright, so I promised I'd get a post up before my birthday. It is now my birthday-eve, so I'm writing this out quick-like, and I hope you enjoy it.

I'll be 24 tomorrow, and this year has been one of massive change for me. I've stopped doing some things that I realized weren't really important to me. I've started devoting a lot more time to things that I realized are. I've approached scary stuff and put some of it to bed, and I've really come to terms with who I am, who I should be, and who I want to be.

Go me!

But I'm not just writing this to give myself a pat on the back. No, I pat my own back on my own time. When people can see me do it in person.

All of this change and age-upgrading has got me thinking a lot about the past. Let me start with a little story:

Colorado was a beautiful place to live; it had four REAL seasons, none of this Winter, winter, (winter), SUMMER, WINTER, crap that we get in Montana. There were mountains, which I could see as a tiny sliver of blue on the horizon if I climbed up onto the cart park at Albertsons. It was the closest to the wild I'd ever lived.

When we moved there, it was also a return to what some would call normalcy. My family was a robust one, teeming with children from teenage to fetus years. Before moving to Colorado, my brother and I were home-taught. Which meant we skipped to the back of the book, copied down some answers, and then ran wild and crazy in the dirt with the other kids in the neighborhood until it was time to sneak a peek in the back of the books again. Colorado meant going back to public school. I slipped in at the very beginning of second grade, raring to monkey around on playground sets with slides high enough that jumping off of them made you a daredevil.

I did. I was. It was awesome.

And all of the moving around that I'd already done meant I was pretty good at making new friends. I could slip in and out of a pack of kids, jump off a slide, and be ready to go again the next day.

One day, during the lunch break, I was hanging out with a bunch of girls. They, like me, were slide-jumpers. Foot racers. Tough girls who had holes ripped in the knees of their jeans that were punctuated by grass stains. Aw, yeah.

The topic of favorite colors came up. Blah, mine is green. Blah, mine is yellow. Blah, mine is orange.

I distinctly remember that I was laying on the grass, my hands tucked under my head, staring up at the painfully blue sky. "Mine is pink."

Silence. Snorts.

I looked up and saw one of my friends, her mouth melting into an open hole of scorn. "What are you, five?"

No. I was not five. I was seven. My honor had been dashed to pieces with four venomous words. I didn't even know what to say! Pink had been my favorite color forEVer. Since before colors existed!

My friend took pity on my dumfoundedness and explained that to be a cool tomboy, I had to have a different favorite color. She said hers was blue. I looked back up at the sky, pointed next to a cloud, and said "That's my favorite color, right there."

Things spiraled out from there.

I'd been a Barney maniac when I was little, but it was now important that I laugh at keychains that pictured him blowing up.

First I was going to find that keychain, but then I was like, "Oh yeah! Birthday tomorrow!"

I used to play with Barbies AND Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but now I had to make up stories about how I just used the Barbies for mangling.

I loved Batman AND My Little Pony, but now if I was going to draw them, it had to be together, and you don't want to know what the Batarang had to be doing.

IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN!!!

I HAD to change who I was, what I liked, what my favorite things were. I simply could not have a girly side. Not if I wanted to be cool. And I did! I couldn't stand the girls who ONLY played with Barbies and wore pink everything, and I didn't want to seem like I was one of them. Or, worse, be stuck with no one else to spend the twenty-minute lunch break with.

There are more and more similar stories from my life, but that's really where it started. I didn't care at all what anyone thought until that one moment. Do you know how long it took for me to admit that pink was maybe okay again?

A very long time. As in, the last couple of years.

And how silly is that? How many things have I given up or hidden because I cared what other people thought? Dozens. I've altered my tastes and interests so many times since that anti-pink event, I surprise myself sometimes when I stop and realize that I don't ACTUALLY feel such-and-such a way about so-and-so a thing.

I've stopped doing that, now. It's such a waste of brain power and embarrassment. As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I'm sure I'll figure out other things that I've picked up and attached to myself for reasons other than "I really do feel passionate about this." And I will deal with that accordingly.

How about you guys? Have you ever made changes to yourself for reasons other than...yourself?

Are you going to change that?