Reinvention

Three or four years ago I came back in contact with an acquaintance I'd had in high school. Through some crazy coincidence, I met and began dating one of his friends and, while over at another of their friend's houses, I heard over and over that I needed to meet "Taylor." Apparently he was very funny and just great to have around. I was there when Taylor walked into the room and was surprised to see that he was the very same Taylor I had met- and not been fond of- back in high school. Everything that had been said of him made me think that maybe he was different than he was back then and I decided to give him another chance... Turns out he was marginally improved but still not someone whose exclusive company I felt the need to keep.

During one of the parties I attended, the talk turned to how Taylor and I had gone to high school together and some of the things that had happened. He was a year below me but, since I'd moved to UT my junior year, I'd never had a semester at Bonneville in which he wasn't present somewhere in the background. Both of us auditioned for every production our school presented. While he never got a leading role, he was cast in most everything in which I was also cast. (Let me clarify that I didn't often get leading roles but I did manage to have lines most of the time.) I think I saw 90% of his auditions in those two years and I know that I saw him cry at least once when he wasn't cast for the part for which he auditioned. This is why it was a HUGE surprise to me to hear that he "Never wanted to be in a play. He just wanted to be a tech guy and our teacher MADE him audition." I was THERE! I SAW how badly he wanted everything and I knew that if he'd wanted to do tech there were both opportunities and people who took those opportunities and never auditioned for anything. He wasn't a tech guy forced to be on stage! He was a passable actor who desperately wanted to be more.

But for some reason I never said any of those things. I just left it alone. Looking back now, I can see why I didn't bother to say anything: These were his "new" friends. None of them knew anything about his past other than what he told them and if he wanted to tell it like it wasn't, was that such a big deal? Did it matter if his version was slightly off from what really happened? It wasn't hurting anyone and it certainly made him feel better. In a way, it's a bit of a Sour Grapes way of looking back- "I never wanted those parts, anyway. Acting was too much work, I just wanted to do the background stuff but was forced into something else."- but maybe it was part of his own reinvention of himself.

I am not now, nor was I then, the same girl I was in high school. I don't expect that anyone else should be forced to stagnate, either. I haven't talked to Taylor in over two years now. I'm sure he has gone on changing as well. In a way, I wish him luck. Not because we ever made it to being friends, but just because I am about to move and will, inevitably, be reinventing myself as I meet new people.

Don't we all reinvent ourselves? Don't we strive change the things about ourselves that we don't like? And only tell the stories we want people to hear? Choose to hold hurts away from the light and not admit they exist? I'm not talking about outright lying or holding grudges. I'm talking about wishing we'd been something or someone else- that we'd done something differently or said something else instead of the words that left our mouths- and so we leave out the parts we don't like when we tell stories to someone new. It doesn't mean that we were different people. It just means that we appear to have been different then. Maybe it is a form of lying, but I don't know one person who would admit to every hurt they've caused, every mistake they've made, every embarrassment they've felt and every thing they might change if given a second chance. To others, we are who we present ourselves to be.