College reunion

[msmemory_archive]

My 25th college reunion is this year, and as ever I don't feel I measure up to my classmates. You should see the beautiful polished (probably retouched!) photo of our class president with her careful makeup and executive hair on the website with the advance publicity for the reunion. I expect there will be much angst in this journal over the next four months.

Comments

[redsquirrel.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Hey, my first thought reading this was "Yeah, but you've got Justin/Mark - I think you win!"

Seriously, love and happiness are the greatest success. You can never tell what anguish lies behind the seemingly fabulous looks and great accomplishments of others. And anyway, you didn't do those things because, basically, you didn't want to - you had other priorities. Like, oh I dunno, being happy with someone you love and who loves you.

*gets off soapbox looking a bit sheepish* Sorry about the preaching. I just get very tired of our culture's constant push to make fabulous, intelligent, creative women feel that they are somehow less that what they are or "should" be because it programs them to judge themselves by some arbitrary, external criteria. I'm working very hard - and succeeding pretty well - on learning to be happy with exactly who and what I am, no apologies, so your worrying pushed a few buttons.

I guess it hits everyone differently but, while it was a direction I was heading in before my diagnosis, after surviving breast cancer, I now feel that being alive and doing what I damn well please makes me a major success and what anybody else has chosen to do with their life is irrelevant to mine. Want to join me? I have to tell you, it feels pretty good. :-)

(And it makes it really fun to talk to all those other people who have done different things, because without that annoying inner monologue comparing yourself to them distracting you, you can really enjoy their stories.)

(Edited for spelling typos, even though I did proofread it, dagnabbit.)