Confessions of A Naughty Girl

Make New Friends, But Keep The Old - One Is Silver and the Other Will Kick You Squarely In The Ass

Wow. What a bomb weekend.

From start to finish, the entire thing was a whirlwind, and I can't say that the influence of alcohol necessarily helped my memory, but I'll do my best to extrapolate what came out of this and put together an entertaining and informative post.

As you may know, this past weekend was the Annual Great Decatur Beer Festival weekend, which has - for my last two years - become a shitshow of sorts. Ghosts of High School Past come into town and, along with new faces and an asinine amount of alcohol, fuel a rockin' good time, if not an over-the-top display of tomfoolery and embarrassing antics.

This year, two of my very good girlfriends came into town, as well as good girlfriend's boyfriend, as well as assorted hooligans from the GOHSP (the acronym of which interestingly - and notably - is phonetically pronounced "gossip"). So what better than to mix with new friends, and stir to taste?

This is always an interesting weekend for me because it's the one distinct time each year where my past meets my present. Two completely different worlds collide, and the outcome, while almost always fun, is also very difficult to predict.

If you've ever moved away from home and started a "new life", as I've done twice now, I'd highly recommend that you find some weekend, if not a beer festival weekend, to mash up these two facets of life, because you gain immeasurable perspective.

And here's what I've learned: I have evolved so much as a person, but put me in the past for just one minute and I will revert back to the same behaviors, the same feelings, the same decisions, every time.

You can run from your past, but it will always catch up with you. You can run from people, and you can move on, but they will always tip your finely-honed sense of balance and put you in your place. Any unfinished business will always surface, and you had better be f*cking prepared to address it or your weekend can go from Fabulous to Flatlining in a mere matter of seconds.

Lately I've had a lot of reservations about my past. I've tried to put it behind me and focus on the future. And while that is absolutely the right thing to do - and something I think I've done a good job of, I did that without realizing that the second I came back into contact with those people, or those situations, that I would have to deal with it. It's very easy to run your whole life - to avoid people or places or things that make you uncomfortable. It's very easy to pick up and forgo all of the mess it would take to straighten things out and reconcile those situations because you don't put yourself back in a place where you're vulnerable to hearing the truth, or feeling whatever emotion it is you're running from in the first place. And a few of those situations - depending on the circumstances, deserve no less than a good marathon jog. But in others, a good jog will get you no understanding, no sense, and a serious case of shin splints.

In those situation, what's harder - but ultimately more rewarding - is facing those situations, and doing everything you can to make it right so that you can make sense of it in your head and move on.

And what I'm learning about that is this - the best way to move on is to accept the things you cannot change, and hey, even embrace it. Isn't that one of the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous anyway? Let's face it - when I am around certain people, or when I'm in certain places, or when I'm at certain beer festivals, I will always be rushed with the same feelings, the same choices, and the same doubts. I will always be faced with the choice to ignore it or embrace it. And I choose to embrace it, because ignoring it is just too f*cking frustrating and ultimately unproductive.

So I did embrace it. And I made the best calls I could. And it wasn't so bad. It was great, in fact, and I was happy. I always appreciate my new friends, but I just now began to appreciate the old. Because like the subject heading of this post, one is silver, and the others are here to remind me of where the f*ck I came from and how I got here. And if that isn't the best course to determine where the hell I'm headed, I suggest you revisit the Peroni beer stand and come back when you're ready to talk.

posted by KA @ 6:44 PM