Advent Calendar 15/25

I'm a person who has had a lot of shitty shit happen to me.

But I'm not anymore.

So it's time to stop letting that effect me as a person.

I've been cheated on, abandoned, I've had people try to kill themselves, I've been lied to, I've had my will to live eroded from me. I've forgotten who I was and what I stood for at times. But I've come out of that. I have left my tragic phase, and it's time to stop being a person who is a tragedy.

Right now I have a promising future, friends and loved ones who support me. A family that loves me, a lovely and loving girlfriend, hobbies I'm passionate about. And yet I still let my neurosis and my fear and my Pavlovian training from my unhealthy ways and relationships in the past. But I'm not that person anymore, and yet I use my past as an excuse for my ways in the present. And it's time to stop.

There is the acceptable period of time for it to effect me, but I think that time is over, and even if people haven't gotten weary of me doing it, I'm going to stop before they do. I've become my own biggest apologist and it's holding me back. I need to own up to myself and move forward. I have my shit but so does everyone, and I'm still young and still forming but I need to leave the habit behind.

I'm no longer in the unhealthy relationships, and right now my anxiety is manageable and my depression is at bay. So I need to work on coping with them and fighting them. Making them less of an issue. And shed the burdens of the past, it's said, it's done, I can't change it and ruining the good I have in my life now will only put me back where I was.

I cannot be the boy who cried heartache any longer. I had my time, and I need to move forward. I'm just three months out from being an adult and part of that is owning up to my shit. And I'm not always the best person, and instead of owning up to that and dealing with it, I make excuses because of my past. But those I love now should not have to suffer for the sins of my past. I refuse to be for anyone what those in the past were to me. I don't want to be the reason that people are having a hard time getting on with their lives. Right now I'm holding myself back, I don't want to hold anyone else back.

I can form healthy habits to deal with stress and anxiety instead of letting it rule me. I can evolve, because I feel it. I felt it today, that I'm no longer who I was even just a few months ago. And I just have to let the fears of whoever that was go and I can move on. Kinda like a Pokemon, evolving, I came from that smaller weaker thing, but now I'm even cooler. I'm like a magikarp about to evolve into a gyrados. Or maybe like a caterpillar trapped in its chrysalis about to burst forward and be a badass, beautiful butterfly, and I just have to let go the fears of the caterpillar and let myself become whatever and whoever I'm meant to be. I'm done letting those who hurt me, and most of all myself hold me back. This is not only my new years resolution, but just my new goal in life. To move on. I've left the tragedy behind, it's time to let it go and stop obsessing it. I've become less of a man and more of a humanoid conglomerate of tragic backstories, and I'm done. I love you, dear reader. And I love me. Because I don't have to hate myself to be a good writer or a good man. I love me. I love my life and I love those in it. And it's time to stop pissing it away. It's basically the lesson that Joseph Gordon Levitt had to learn in "The Night Before." The past happened, but it does not define me and I'm done letting it.

Happy Holidays.

<3

 Love,

Bailey S. Fox