Further evolution

I have let my disabilities take me into hiding. Every time I turned down going out, no matter what the reason, even the good reasons, brought me further from the real world. That is not to say I do not deal with the real world, I do in fact deal with the real world, I just choose carefully when and where to deal with the real world.

This weekend I left the house, and went out by myself to a place where I was not going even going to be hanging out with someone I knew, just watching them (not in the creepy way, their band was playing). I stayed out until my phone crashed, losing me my lifeline back to my world. I enjoyed everything outside the panicking, and really wished I had done more.

This experience made me realize what I am missing out on, and how far my issues have gone. To be a part of society I need to stop being so much of this me, and more of the me I was back in high school, the me I was before the rape, the me that enjoys just going out even without a reason, the me that could go out without being protected by others. The only good things I can say the current me has that the old me did not are two things: the first is the education, which I was clearly on the path to prior, and would have gotten, and gotten sooner than I have; the second are the friends I have made since, which I can in some ways attribute to the me I started becoming as I met them, but I think outside of the end of my main relationship that happened because of it being the only reason I met them, we would have been able to become friends, and without being able to rule out the possibility meeting them I cannot say I would not have them had I not let my life be pulled from its course.

As an anthropologist I need to not think of the world in a purely logical, scientific, mathematical way, but I am also someone who the world was convinced was to be a mathematician by the time I turned 8, who was raised by a philosopher. I still view the world in black and white, but there are only shades of grey. What was done to me was as dark as can be, but what came of it was not, where I have been is not the light path that was chosen for me, but I learned from it. I do view the world as not full of failure but full of learning opportunities, I just wish I did not take as long to learn what I needed, to move on, and not have hide for as long as I have.

Can I actually say my actions this weekend show I have evolved? No, as evolving involves moving forward, when really all I did was move back to where I had been. But I can have learned from both it, and where I have living, and those will help me evolve into the next stage of me.