Flashback Friday - up to journal #17

(no pics this time. Sorry Heather)

So this week's journal reading brought me through 8th and 9th grade. There were some very interesting times. Quite a lot of heartbreak - both from boyfriends and best girl friends. Some of it made for some tough reading. But here is a benign entry I feel like I can share.

Jan 1990

"I'm very tired. During the exam [school midterms], I kept getting so tired and certain questions of something would trigger a memory of like 4th grade or something - simple unrelated abstract memories. And I kept getting these overly familiar images from some of my past dreams and my mind would want to retreat into the dream and I'd have to literally command myself in my mind to come back here where I really was and concentrate on the exam. Needless to say, I was quite distracted. Not to mention the times my mind insisted on starting to reminisce over ____ [a certain boy, of course]. I hope I did ok on my exam. :)"

So, as I have been rereading all this stuff I have been trying to ask myself how I have changed, or what I can learn about myself from what I went through then. Sometimes it's hard to see. I am still so much the same, somewhat unfortunately, I guess. I still go through periods of depression where I feel worthless and alone (what I often referred to as "my certain state of mind" back then). I still long for closer friends and say things to people that I later regret. So I wonder sometimes what it means exactly to "grow up"? What does it mean to be responsible and mature anyway? I figure I must be different than I was then in at least some ways. Certainly, I am confident and secure in my marriage relationship in a way that I never really imagined and only dreamed about back then. I am so grateful for that. And I accomplished some very hard goals that I hesitantly set for myself during that time (college, mission). But in essence, deep down, am I still the same silly little girl? I don't know.

And in some ways I am equally afraid of being different as I am of being the same.