Missed Opportunities

Sometimes I just plain don't like to think about the past. I'm very open about it, and will tell you my life story and mistakes in a heartbeat, but it hurts to think about it sometimes. I ruined a lot of friendships and potential friendships with my drinking. And it's really painful to think about that. It allowed me to put on a face for other people that just wasn't who I really was. I settled for situations I thought I deserved to be in and jumped at the chance to do whatever other people wanted me to do. I knew a shit ton of people in college - everywhere I walked there was someone I knew and I'm lucky to have come away with even a few good friends. Forming relationships is still really hard for me. I am a survivor, but I can't relate to other survivors in some ways because I was gang raped by 5 PEERS. I was not molested by an older adult, but by my peers. Those boys were my first friends, and I think that what they did to me and how I felt about it really set the standard for my later friendships. I came to think that friends were really just people I could use to get what I wanted - affection, etc. It's only now that I've been sober for a little while that I realized this is not true. People are amazing. I think I was really fascinated with all sorts of people when I came to Penn State, and then I drank and forgot about my feelings. I was only focused on the high that drinking and sex gave me. That's really hard to admit, but I was completely selfish and dependent on what other people thought of me. And where before it was hard for me coming up here because I didn't know everyone, now it's hard because I know so many people and they all saw me when I was in the belly of the whale, so to speak. I was a drunk. I was promiscuous. I was selfish. I was all of those things. But I'm not those things anymore. I constantly have to remind myself of that. I think that I have a pretty cool story - one that