WTF Happened To Me

Yesterday, I was thinking about how different I am from how I was 5 years ago. I've done a lot of things that I thought I would never do, ever. I don't necessarily have any regrets, but I don't like the pathway I've been going down. I feel like I'm just part of a downward spiral, and everything just keeps getting worse and worse.

Let's look at the facts. While I always had a dirty mind, I was never actually a bad influence, because I never actually did anything bad. Now, I'm a terrible influence. I enjoy smoking cigarettes. I enjoy having a lot of sex, and I don't care if it's with random strangers. I've had sex without a condom many times now. I have had sex with my best friend's ex-boyfriend. I have had sex with a friend's love interest. I allow men to pay for things for me now without even offering to pay for myself. I have smoked weed. I have become exceedingly cynical, and expect that people are going to hurt me eventually. Then I hurt them before they hurt me, but that's almost worse because I end up hurting myself. I might look (and actually be) happy on the outside, but deep inside I'm an unhappy mess.

And now? I'm just a fucked up girl looking for some peace of mind. It made me wonder, what on earth happened to me? Why did I become like this?

Two reasons.

Reason #1--  Most of the meaningful relationships I've ever had, eventually became fucked up. Even with my family. Sometimes it was my fault, and sometimes it wasn't.

Reason #2-- Penn State. The snotty attitudes of the majority of my classmates resulted in my not having very many friends in my majors. It resulted in my having a miserable experience when I went to Italy for field camp, and an equally miserable experience when I did it out West. Miserable experiences on all orchestra trips as well.

And because I went there with the low self esteem of someone who grew up being called ugly and fat by her classmates, who had no luck at all with guys except for her last relationship, and that relationship got fucked up because he (T.J.) dumped me when I left for college-- then started dating my friend and thought SHE was worth long-distance the next summer-- that certainly set myself up for success on the dating front. I jumped into a rebound that lasted 11 months (Elton), and then went wild afterward, as that was the opposite extreme from boring Elton. It didn't help that in my time at Penn State (except the last few weeks), I was only asked out on two dates. Two. Because the guys there only wanted to have sex without commitment, and most of the sex was exceedingly lousy. But I went along with it because 1) I was finally getting attention from guys who thought I looked good, and 2) my friends at the time were even wilder and they helped me to feel more confident about my body.

Then there's the fact that at the #1 party school, pretty much everyone is a smoker, an alcoholic, and/or a drug addict. Then all the guys want to have sex without condoms because "it just doesn't feel as good." And when you're around that long enough, you start to do it yourself. You start to think, "well everyone else does it and turns out ok, so I should be ok if I do it myself."

Also, I went through friends like wildfire. Most of these experiences started out as being not my fault. Then, because I was trying hard to please my friends and they were ditching me when I hadn't done anything wrong (or they refused to tell me what I had done wrong), and in fact was trying to be a wonderful friend, I started to please myself instead. Then it was me who was responsible for the wrongdoing. It was my friends who got mad at me and stopped talking to me. No matter what I did, I lost friends.

Then of course I got into legal trouble for trying to be a nice person. People took advantage of me for being nice. So what am I supposed to do, not be nice and be mean girl instead with a stick up my ass? Again, no matter what I do, it's always the wrong thing and always makes me unhappy.


Well, Penn State certainly did not agree with me. As Laura pointed out, most of my failed friendships happened during my time there. I just don't understand it. Maybe things will be different now that I'm out of that place.... or maybe it's not, and I have more disappointment in store from other people.