That Girl I Used to Be

I used to be someone else.

That Girl.

That Girl made terrible decisions.  She hurt people.  She did things I don’t even want to know about. 

One day, I chose to be someone else, someone new.  Someone as far removed from That Girl as possible.  I took all the mean and hurtful words anyone had ever said about her, and I hurled them at her, one by one, until she cowered in the corner of my mind.

Broken.  Scared.  Alone.

She is a stranger to me, as I am to her.  I say her name, That Girl, with my lip curled into a sneer.

For years, I’ve looked upon That Girl as someone to be ashamed of.  She was someone I didn’t want to be associated with, and I certainly didn’t want to know anyone she had called a friend.  People tried to claim they knew me, and I would nod, politely, because that’s what nice girls do.  

And then, as quickly as I could, I would disengage.  They knew That Girl, not me.  I had no desire to reminisce about That Girl and the things she did.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about her with guarded curiosity.  About the way she was, and the reasons she did the things she did.

I’ve always thought of myself as being unique, a square peg in a world of round holes.  But That Girl?  She was textbook .  As alone and different and scared as she felt, she was surviving  in the most basic of ways.

That Girl did things to our shared body.  She let other people do things to it, too, things I can recall as if I read them in a tattered book once, long ago.

That book makes me cry, every time.  It is too well written, too detailed for my taste.

There are times I feel traces of her in my consciousness and I beat her down, like a schoolyard bully.  

So much time has passed.  Why won’t she just curl up in her corner and die?

This person I have been for… what, 17 years now?  Believes that the more good I do, the straighter the path I walk, the more vanilla a life I lead, I will make up for That Girl’s misdeeds.  I will right her wrongs, and maybe, one day, I will have a clean slate.

But then I wonder. 

Doesn’t she deserve a clean slate, too?  She did things I’d rather forget, yes, but she was also daring and funny and she didn’t give a shit about what any other person on this planet thought of her.  She was carefree and full of passion, living every single day of her life to the fullest with no thought about tomorrow, or next week, never wondering who she would be ten, twenty, thirty years down the road. 

People gravitated toward her, loving or hating her, nothing in between, but she was alive.  Oh my god, she was ALIVE in a way I have never allowed myself to experience.

Lately, I wonder what would happen if I were to make peace with that girl cowering in the corner of my mind, my heart.  Dust her off, give her a long overdue hug, and tell her I forgive her.

Let her become a part of me.  Of us.

I forgive her.

That Girl is a part of me.

Finally, I forgive me.