Maybe you were labeled the class clown. The shy one. The reckless one. The know-it-all.
Maybe you were the smart one. The one going places.
Maybe your current reality doesn’t match their fantasy.
Maybe that stupid mistake you made 13 years ago somehow gets brought up every summer at your family reunion. Or the whole family spends Christmas Eve with scandalous stories swirling in their heads, but no one dares talk about the past. It stays barely hidden behind mouthfuls of mashed potatoes, plastered on smiles, and sanitized versions of family history.
And you know you’re not the same person at 26 that you were at 16. Your 43-year-old self has long since moved past the mistakes of your youth. You, at 34, no longer play the role you were assigned as a child.
You’ve moved on so well until you find yourself on that well-worn couch surrounded by the familiar smell of your grandma’s apple pie while your past mistakes and assigned role stare back at you from the faces of aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings.
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A counseling prof in grad school told of the huge influx of college age clients he’d come to expect in early November and May as the students started making plans and buying tickets to head home for the holidays or summer vacation. He’d teach them coping techniques for making it through the whirlwind of expectations, the stories they were expected to uphold for their parents.
Because it’s tempting to keep living the stories we’ve been given. Or to deny our stories. Or to spin them to make all the players look a little better. Or to play them up to become a bigger and better version of our former selves.
But we don’t have to. Because our history doesn’t define us. The roles we were assigned then aren’t our roles for the future. We can claim our stories, and write a new ending. We can pause and ask ourselves why certain situations and certain people make us feel a certain way. We can stop ourselves from repeating the past, from perpetuating the cycles.
We can change.
And we can allow others to do the same.