Building this new life from scratch has helped me see that being uncomfortable with someone shows just as much about ourselves as when we are completely at ease with our company. I've rarely had to be surrounded by people I hardly know and to be forced into the situation where I choose my friends, I choose how much I want to spill about myself, I choose, to some extent, how I am to be perceived. But learning how to be comfortable in my own skin has led me to question who's skin am I really living in? I come from a world of 5 star hotels, drunken escapades in Europe, $400 Hermes scarfs, bitch fights, witty and politically incorrect banter, and a Mercedes Benz. But in Boston, I hold back this part of myself to share a dorm with two girls, eat cafeteria food, hide any hint of a fashionable wardrobe with a patchy black ankle length L.L. Bean coat, and I absolutely love it... well, the coat is debatable. So, who is who? Is the person I'm showing these people who I really am or am I obligated to share more of my past. Do our pasts really make us who we are today or do they warn us who not to become?
The thing about home is the past shows up in the present no matter how many new memories you've made. There is this unrelenting stigma attached to every move I make and I'm desperately afraid that some of the mistakes/judgments/decisions from my past will reveal themselves to my life in Boston. Not simply in the sense of monetary earnings (or that of my parents'), but how I've conducted myself in the past four years; who I've hurt, who I wished I could..., how I've handled situations in general.
The strong cultural difference between Charlotte and Boston is one that I'm reluctant to address. I put myself out on the line even when I simply try to mention it to the boyfriend in Boston. One of the most respected traits I can find in someone is an ability to withhold judgments. Unfortunately, this is a rare quality in the human race and I'm at a risk to alter how everyone sees me in the North if I expose the more outward qualities of my disposition. The girl that Boston knows me as is to a certain extent exactly who I am or ,moreover, who I come off as. But the way in which I think of myself is lacking when I'm in Boston. I'm tougher and more sarcastic than I claim to be and I'm hoping this is less of a dumbing down of my personality than it is just waiting for some sign of comfortability to seep through. I feel as though I haven't completely broken through to my full character in Boston and while my personality at home seems to be how I measure how I'm supposed to act, it is also heavily influenced by the people who surround me; the same people who are not around me when I'm at school.
Who we become results from balancing our pasts with the present and finding the core elements in ourselves that only we know. Our guilty consciouses, our inner most thoughts, our underlying desires tell us how we have been molded and how we will mature. That's not to say that dressing up as a slutty Hermione Granger and eating disgustingly good burritos means I'm going to become a fat prostitute but maybe it does mean that I admire a commanding female character and a healthy appetite. I have holes that have yet to be filled but for now I can definitively say I am happy with the choices I've made in Boston and the life I've just begun to live.
