Why can't I be more like Julie McEachern?

[mewmewmew_]

I can't believe I saw Julie McEachern tonight. I can't believe a lot of tonight, but that especially. I don't like to go to the club on Saturdays. Or Fridays. Not since the incident a few years ago. But after a series of events I somehow I ended up there tonight. I'm not saying it was a bad thing, I had a decent time. But at one point I was

Comments

[goalie_dude]

It's funny you should be making a post like this. Something similar has been happening to me. All last week, people from my childhood have been passing through my workplace. I haven't seen any of them in at least 20 years. My reaction to seeing them, even though none of them have (to my knowledge) recognised me, has been similar to yours - a kind of paralysing fear, even though I'm not quite sure what I should be afraid of.

Your response to your dad's comparison of you to Julie MacEachern is dead on: You're not her. You never will be. It's difficult to distance yourself from your parents' expectations, no matter how old you are. It sounds as though you've managed to work your way through this. Hopefully, your dad has too.

[mewmewmew_]

Aye, it's not a complex I have fortunately. It upset me back in elementary school because my father would say it so often, but I got over it. I knew then that I didn't want to be her. What she had wasn't what I wanted. I did feel a bit sad for apparently being a disappointment to my father. He was always disappointed in me as a kid though. He took it out on me for his not being around enough. He hated that he wasn't there while I was growing up, and that I was growing up too fast. He'd tell me how much he "missed his little girl" even when I was still a little girl. It wasn't my fault he wasn't there

[one_misfit]

I just wanted to chime in and say I totally understand the things that you have expressed here. Every time I go "home" to the city I grew up in (which is only an hour and a half from where I live now), I worry about all of these things. Sometimes I run into people and they recognize me, sometimes I run into them and I look away before they get a chance to. I have come to the conclusion that most of the people I do not still talk to, and there are lots that I do, I do not owe anything to as I didn't really like them in the first place, and some of them went out of their way to make my life hell when I was younger. In fact, someone who used to torment me back in 6-9th grade recently sent me a friend request on facebook, and my first thought was "I wonder if they are just friending me to see if "it's" really true. Which is kind of sad, because I'm proud of myself, and who and what I've become in that I have a wonderful family, a great (career) job, and a lot of good things going for myself. All of which I don't think I could/would have