Transcripts

I got college thrown back up in my face again today. To be completely honest, it's almost funny when this happens now, because it means that either they've held a grudge for 4 years now or we've fallen out of touch and never really had a chance to clear things up, such that the possibility of certain things being true is still real to them. In either case, that someone can hold a grudge that long when they weren't even involved is funny to me because it shows me what kind of person they are, and that people could know me for 4 years without ever clearing up their doubts is a little funny to me too. What isn't funny is the thought that over those 4 years I gave them something to affirm their suspicions.

It used to bother me a great deal when people would bring up my past with me and hold it to me like it were the present. I've let that go, those people are as much a part of the past as the ideas they present, and it's not really my job to bring them up to speed anymore. But it has made me think a bit on why I came to Japan, and why I'm so happy here. While not the whole reason, I'm coming to understand the truth in what I'm about to say.

What I like about living in Japan is that the people I meet know who I am, and I'm not constantly forced to explain myself or patch things up. I hate to feel like an escapist, but, a great deal of my relationships back home are tainted, and there's not a lot I can do about that anymore. It would be one thing if I were a fucked up person who moved from place to place fucking things up, thinking the whole while I just haven't found the right place when really it's me that's the problem, as would be the classic escapist case.

I learned what I should have from my situation, I grew, I went through Hell and back and I'm a better person now. The problem is that you don't get to reset things and start over, even if your approach is new. It's like your GPA, more or less, in that failing a couple of semesters in a row is gonna drop it quite a bit, and getting a 4.0 for the rest of the time doesn't wipe the slate, you still have to work with that average. The marks on your transcript are still there.

So instead, you transfer to a new school, and get good marks the whole time you're there, and when you look at your transcript there and it's all clean and good, you can be proud of yourself for what you've accomplished without having to constantly be reminded of how poorly you're apparently capable of performing. The difference in this analogy is that you didn't transfer to another school only to flunk out again.

My life here is amazing, even if it's boring sometimes. I'm nearly out of debt, I'm travelling, have great friends, am genuinely happy, learn something new every day, get paid to chat with people, and have made healthy relationship choices. What would I want to leave here for?

I realize now that it's not so much people holding me to my past that I want to get away from, though I AM tired of it and would rather not deal with it. What I want to get away from is my past itself, who I was or what I was a part of. I don't want to be around it because there's a subconscious drive internally on my part and externally on the part of my friends to meet the stereotype and standard they have of me, which is less than who I am, and I no longer ever want to be. I recognize the power of social norms and seek to use it to my advantage rather than hold me back.