Sherri Cornelius

Talked with a high school friend last night for the first time in years. It got me to thinking, as such conversations might, about all the things I'd planned to do, how much I've changed and how very, very similar I still am to that young woman. All these years I've been doing a self-therapy, trying to fix my personality, trying to be a different person. I never even questioned it; if I were able to heal all the wounds I'd acquired over the first third of my life, I would gain qualities which could not be contained inside the person I was, and so a new person would emerge. Not only was the new person better, stronger, faster than the old person; no, the picture I held unquestioned in my mind was a perfect person. A person who never made mistakes. A person who always knew the right thing to say and do, and always said and did them.

In the reflection of my old friend, I see I may not have changed much at all, at least not in the ways I'd hoped. Maybe those qualities I railed against are just ... me. That never occurred to me before. I thought I could fix them.

I'm not sad, just processing this. I love when fate requires me to challenge previously accepted fact. I may have more to say on this tomorrow.