After a great weekend with some awesome friends, I've decided to start looking at the positives and to try to let go of all of the anger, self loathing, and frustration presented in the previous posts.  I've started to remind myself that none of that matters anymore-that it's in the past and there's nothing I can do to change it, even changing right now won't change the mistakes, problems, and regrets of the past.  That being said, I will forever have regrets and sadness over those mistakes that I have made and I don't think that the thoughts of not being good enough will ever fully go away.  I'll always have that thought of "but what if..."  I just can't focus on them anymore.  I can't focus on the what ifs and need to instead focus on what will be.  I can't change the fact that I gained an entire person in weight in the past 12 years, but I can change for the future. I can continue on the trend I'm on now and lose the final 80 lbs to become the person I want to be, the person I deserve to be.  I can get my healthy self back and start to work on my self esteem.

Instead of looking at my failures, I need to instead focus on my successes.  Yes, I destroyed the first years of my college experience by not going to classes and am therefore not where I intended to be in my life right now.  But instead of focusing on that, maybe I need to focus on the fact that in just the past 5 years of attending classes both part and full time, I have raised my GPA from a dismal 1.8 overall to a 2.73 overall.  Is it perfect?  Of course not.  Is it indicative of what I can actually do?  Absolutely not.  My EKU overall is a 3.45, which shows my abilities better.  I can't go back and force myself to continue to try to find a doctor who would listen to me about having mental illness instead of just pushing it off as depression or just in my head, yet I hold onto that anger, that frustration, and wish it was different.  I can't go back and convince myself to listen to my friends and family when it came to the type of guys I dated, when it came to their flaws and issues that I chose to ignore, but I can be grateful that by going for them I learned what I don't want in a relationship.

I don't want to sacrifice myself and my likes just to have a boyfriend ever again.  I don't want to turn my back on my own friends because I feel that every waking minute should be devoted to my relationship and how to make him happy.  Even just sitting and writing this I can't believe that it's something I have to say.  Thinking of my 14 year old self, the one who had her life mapped out without a man, I can't help but see her disappointment in me and who I've become.  This helpless shell of a woman who has no identity outside of her relationships, who is clamoring to get back the pieces of herself she gave up.  In my desperation to be like other people who had devoted significant others, I lost myself.  I lost the love of playing soccer, the love of going out with my friends, and most of all, the love of being me.  That ends now.  I can't continue on the way I have been, it's how I ended up here in the first place-sad, alone, and feeling like a loser because of failed relationship after failed relationship.  My relationships were doomed from the beginning-I was doing everything I could to make my significant other happy instead of what would make me happy.  I'm not saying that I shouldn't compromise and try to make them happy too, but I wasn't trying this-I was doing whatever he wanted, no matter how unhappy it made me, and pretending that I really didn't want to do the things I wanted to do.

Now, the positives.  It isn't too late to try to get back the pieces of myself I gave up.  I can work on my athletic abilities again-maybe I can't fully gain it all back, but I can do it just for the enjoyment.  I can get back to my healthier self again, it's within my reach and I know that I'll enjoy it more now than I did then.  I thought I was so fat and let the ignorant comments of other insecure people destroy how I felt about myself to the point where I started to become the person they had always said I was, but it's not too late to push those thoughts back and get healthy.  It's not too late to go out and have a good time with my friends, to make new friends, and to start my career.  Am I starting where I wanted to?  No.  But I'll get there.  It might take me until I'm 50 to finally get to where I want to be, but it will happen.


I never thought that 28, almost 29 would be the most important time in my own self discovery, I thought I would know who I was at 18, know what I wanted to be, who I wanted to be with, and who I was.  To be honest, I had no clue.  We spend so much of our adolescence trying to decide what to be instead of who we are.  Instead of enjoying the things that we love to do, we focus hard on what our adult self might like to do. We are told at such a young age to decide what we want our future careers are, at a time when our brains aren't even fully developed and matured.  We're not only encouraged to attend college and figure out a career path, it's almost demanded of us by society.  I fell into that game in high school.  I saw the sneers on people's faces when someone said that they were going to start working right after school, the gasps of horror if you said you were going to...community college.  Those words were almost spat out of the mouths of the judgmental elite as if going to community college was only for idiots and that if you went there you were obviously beneath them.  All of this pressure from not only peers, but also the guidance counselors, led to a state of mind among juniors and seniors that you had to get accepted to an amazing school and program.  If you didn't, you were looked down on.  This perceived hierarchy was part of what convinced me that I had to get into PA school, had to go to the elite private schools, and had to enter college when I really wasn't ready.  No more will I let the opinions of others determine what I do.

I still have my fears, my anxieties, and regrets, but I need to learn to accept them and just enjoy things for what they are-enjoy my life.  The loss of my father 2 years ago should have served to show me that I need to embrace every day for what it is and do whatever I can to enjoy my life.  Instead, I chose to drown myself in self pity.  I need to now start to do the things that I love, to surround myself with people who make me feel loved and accepted, and to finally love and respect myself.  I need to realize that I can't live in regret, that if I had left my marriage 4 years ago when I originally wanted to, I wouldn't be where I am educationally today. If I hadn't tried things out a month ago, I might never have come to these realizations and finally left.  I need to be grateful for the experiences of my past because they have taught me lessons, important ones that will help to shape the rest of my life.  The more I learn to embrace them, the more I will learn to love me.

I'm a loving, compassionate, sometimes overly passionate, good person.  I just need to look at those positives instead of the insecurity, regret, and hatred of the Becca of the past.  I need to accept my faults and embrace my positives.  I think I'm finally starting to "get it."  I can change my future and become the person that I thought I'd be at 14.  Self sufficient, confident, and most of all, happy just being me.  I don't need to be who someone else wants me to be, I need to be who I want me to be and I need to find someone who can accept that about me, not want to change me to be their ideal.  I deserve someone who will love me for me, but first I need to do the same.  Tomorrow is a brand new day and I'm going to do everything I can to spend it learning who I am and being happy in my own company.

I'm not too old to start over, not too old to have fun.  Bars and restaurants won't stop letting me in once I turn 30 and my life won't end.  I need to look at 29 and 30 as just the beginning of my life as the new Becca.  The one I was meant to be and who I am still learning so much about.