Red solo cup, I fill you up! Proceed to....cringe.

Before texting and instant messaging and email became something that was absolutely necessary to keep in touch, we used to write notes to each other. You know, on paper with a pen or pencil. I am sure you remember. Back in junior high and high school. I used to have shoe boxes stuffed full of notes from my friends and boys that I was way too shy to actually speak to in person. They were folded up in weird trapezoid origami shapes and marked with "4U2C ONLY!".  Very very serious stuff. It was probably 7 years ago that I finally stopped moving those shoe boxes from house to house and dumped them directly into the garbage with a satisfied feeling of moving on from my childhood. I am an adult now. Rawr!!

 

I was recently reintroduced to all my years of teenage angst by a guy who for some inexplicable reason still has a handful of those notes, folded up in weird trapezoid origami  shapes, with "4U2C Only!!" written on them, stuffed into a little red plastic cup that lived on a shelf in his room all through high school. And then that cup was packed away in storage for (let's see, from 1999 to 2012) 13 years until they made their grand reappearance!

A serious sense of unease came over me as I realized what was in the cup. And he was oh so very eager to show me just how ridiculous I used to be. Ugh.... really must I be tortured with how whiny and needy and desperate for love and affection I was 13 years ago?  Ok, I can be honest, not much has changed, but I would like to think that I hide it better now than I did back then.

So over the course of 5 or 6 letters, cringing at the embarrassing moments, laughing that the funny jokes I had forgotten about and feeling a tiny twinge of something similar to regret, I realized a very important thing; We don't really ever change.  Maybe we evolve and become more than what we started out as, but the basic principals of who we are remain intact. I am still that awkward girl, reaching to fit in and be "liked". The games I played then (I am a girl after all) are the same games that I play now.

*Sigh*  and here I was thinking that I had changed and become this person who was so much more.... so much better (mo better!) than that insecure girl. The sad thing is that I still identify way too much with my 1997 self. 

Quick! I need a dirty martini and any movie from the Criterion Collection so that I can feel mature (and pretentious) and grown up!