Reflections on Life

Last night I returned to the high school I attended for the first times since I graduated in 1995.  I returned to walk around the track with my NaKoda. As I walked around the track I thought about the years I actually attended there and all the events and experiences of my youth and the people I went to school with.  

I thought about all the people that were my "friends" at back then and how many of them actually remained a part of my life over the past 15 years. One thought that kept  coming back to me was something that I have heard from several people over the years, "Brownwood sucks, I hate that town, I will never go back there" and I kept thinking about all the people in other locations who say the same thing about the towns they lived in. It's as if we blame the actual towns for whatever negative experiences we had growing up. 

The thing is every town is pretty much the same. Politics, law enforcement, etc. all have issues that people don't like. The actual town though has nothing to do with any issues. The town is just a geographical location. Since moving back I have realized that Brownwood is not a bad little town. There has been growth while I was away and there have been some improvements and the actual town is a cute little small Texas town. Downtown has been cleaned up and reminds me of the way the town use to look back in the old days (from what pictures I have seen) A lot of the neighborhoods I remember being in bad shape have experienced clean ups and actually are decent looking now, new businesses have come to the area.   

I think about the issues I experienced that made me want to leave Brownwood and I realize that none of those experiences ever had anything to do with the actual town. (Well when I was younger I wanted to live where there were more things to do).  Most of my issues were with my so called "family" and "friends". My "family" proved to me day after day that they weren't really my family and friends did the same. It took me many years to work through the feelings of abandonment and neglect my family left me with that led to me being emancipated at 16. It took me awhile to realize that they were never going to understand what a true family was and that they were always going to be the people they were.  I realized that the people who said they were my friends but knew very little about me and were never truly friends were always going to be the same way too. I realized all of these things and through working through my issues and realizing that some things were out of my control, I was just going to have to learn to be ok with.  

As I continued my walk around the track and thought of how far I had come and how much I had learned about myself, human nature and what i wanted in the future I realized I had achieved FREEDOM! I was free from all my baggage. I had freed myself from other people's drama and I enjoyed who I was and all I had accomplished in life. I may not be some big Fortune 500 executive, I may not be a celebrity, but I had worked hard and accomplished many things in my life and still had many years to go to continue to grow and gain more success in my life! 

I realized I was glad to be back in Brownwood and that it could be a great place to be if I let it be!