Moving on From Bullshit-type of posts
I’ve been thinking a lot about the person I was in the past, and honestly, it’s hard for me to look back at some of the things I said and did without feeling ashamed of myself.
There are things I’ve done that I genuinely wish I could take back. Not just because I’m worried about what other people think of me now, but because I know that version of me was capable of hurting people, being cruel, being careless, and making choices that I should have known were wrong.
Sometimes I look back at old posts or things I wrote and I honestly don’t recognize the person I was. And at the same time, I know I can’t just distance myself from that person because it’s embarrassing. That was still me. I made those choices. I said those things. I put them out into the world.
That’s probably the hardest part for me to accept.
I can make excuses for why I acted the way I did. I can say I was younger, that I didn’t understand certain things, that I was angry, immature, or just a different person at the time. But none of those things completely excuse what I did. I should have known better in a lot of situations, and I wish I had.
I’m genuinely sorry for the things I did that hurt people. I’m sorry for the things I said without thinking about how they might affect someone else. I’m sorry for the times I treated something seriously when I should have, or treated people like their feelings didn’t matter.
I know I can’t undo any of it.
I can’t go back and give people a different version of me. I can’t erase memories. I can’t change how someone felt because of something I did. And I know that deleting an old post doesn’t erase the fact that I wrote it in the first place.
But I can decide who I am going to be now.
That’s what I’m trying to do.
I’m trying to become someone who actually thinks about the consequences of their actions. Someone who can admit when they’re wrong without immediately trying to defend themselves. Someone who listens when people tell them they’ve caused harm instead of looking for an excuse.
I’m not asking anyone to forget what I’ve done. I’m not asking anyone to forgive me if they aren’t ready to. And I definitely don’t expect a post like this to suddenly prove that I’ve changed.
I know the only thing that can really prove that is time and how I act from here on out.
There’s also a lot of old stuff of mine still online that I may not even remember. Old posts, blogs, replies, comments, and other things I wrote years ago. If you come across something that you think is genuinely awful, harmful, or something I shouldn’t still have up, please DM me.
I mean that genuinely. You don’t have to be afraid that I’m going to get defensive just because you brought something to my attention. I would rather know about it and have the chance to confront it than unknowingly leave something hurtful sitting online.
If I look at something and realize that it shouldn’t be there, I’m more than willing to take it down.
I’m not proud of everything I’ve done. There are parts of my past that make me uncomfortable to think about, and sometimes I wish I could just forget that I was ever that person.
But I don’t want to forget.
Because if I forget, I don’t learn from it.
So I’m trying to sit with the regret instead of running from it. I’m trying to use it as a reason to change rather than just a reason to feel sorry for myself.
I know I have a lot of work to do. I know saying that I’m trying doesn’t automatically make me better. I know I have to actually show it.
But I really, genuinely want to.
I don’t want to keep hurting people. I don’t want to keep making the same mistakes. And I don’t want my past to be an excuse for the person I become in the future.
I can’t change who I was.
But I can spend the rest of my time trying to be better than that person.