When I get to Warwick Avenue, please drop the past and be true...

I was struck with a realization today. It came to me from an episode of Ugly Betty, which I have been watching religiously for the past few days (that in itself might explain the continuous dreams I've been having about moving to NY.).

In the particular episode in which I was struck by lightning, Betty was pitching an article on profiling a Playwright with the idea of 'reinventing' oneself. Betty goes on to realize that she has the opportunity to reinvent herself as well. VOILA! New Betty, combined with the old and harnessing in the new.

That blew my mind, and made me realize what my problem has been. The reason I haven't been able to find myself, and why I seem to struggle, trip and fall every time I think I have rediscovered me, is because I keep trying to find the me of years past. The one that I loved, right out of high school, going into college. The fearless girl who had a handle on her social anxiety, loved large and laughed lots, and who knew what she wanted and went for it. The girl who knew that she needed to fight for what she wanted, and earned it. Who went from having people believing she didn't have what it took, to waving a scholarship in their faces with early acceptance from the only Journalism School she applied to.

While many of those attributes are not gone forever, I've realized the problem lies with the fact that I can't be that girl again. As bright and brilliant as she was, that girl was naive, and knew nothing of the things I know today. She hadn't been used by men, or spent nights so drunk that she could barely crawl into her bed. While she had seen the childish drama and evils that befall 99.9% of high school girls, she hadn't seen just how cruel people could be. While her view on life was nowhere near being sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, it certainly seems like that compared to what I've seen and been through now.

I can't become Geek of years past, but I now have within me the power to reinvent Geek. I still am those things I admired in 19 year old Geek, but I have with it the added experience of 24 year old Geek. I have the hurts, dreams, experiences, education, and reality-checks of the past five years, and I can use those to make an even stronger Geek.

I have so much I want to do in this world-- so much I want to be, and it's all been held back by the fears of not being able to grasp who I am in this universe. But I have a feeling that once I can figure out how to incorporate old me into all the things I am today, I might just be shy of unstoppable when it comes to achieving the things I want in life.

And so I say, fairwell to Little Geek, and Teenaged Geek, and even YA Geek... hello to whoever Adult Geek might be.