it ain't you, babe

[metaphortunate]

Okay y'all, L and I did shape each other's personalities to the degree that that's inescapable when you're good friends with someone from the ages of 7 to 17, but come on. I was not a blank slate and she was not my second grade Svengali. I would not be the same person at the age of 36 that I was at the age of 6 whether or not I had ever met L. My parents have just always preferred to blame the bits of my personality that they don't like on my friends. And okay, there's some truth to that, but it's also a chicken and egg question: these are the friends I've had because I chose them, for reasons of my own, because these are the people that I have wanted to know and love and be like. I chose you all, and you chose me, and we shape each other but you are not the cause of me.

Comments

[snarp]

Maybe you were a particularly independent-minded child? Did you lead any revolutions before middle school.

Or she may not even have actually felt that way at the time, and it's just kind of the narrative of the day. I know my grandmother was constantly retconning her personal history of her kids doing stuff wrong. Did she know Dad had "gotten bad" in grade school, or was he her perfect angel until law school, or... who knows.

[metaphortunate]

Good point. Who even remembers what happened ~30 years ago anyway?