Excuse me, have we met?

I haven't been around for long, but for the time that I've spent here, I've met many a person.

I've met the mean girls, the jocks, the band geeks and the drama kids. I've met the quiet kid who no one talks to unless they're cracking a joke, typically at his expense. I've met the partiers and the kids who don't get invited out. I've met the people who come from money and the people who don't. I've met the lovers and the haters. The posers and the skaters. The old and the young. The educated and the unfortunate. The sick and the healthy. The dreamers and the writers, the singers and the band. All these people I've met and then some. Not only have I met them all, but I've been most of them at some point in time.

I've met the people who become your family. The people that you confide in. The people that you depend on for anything and everything at the drop of a hat. These people know who you are inside and out. No matter what you say and what you do, these people will always be there.

People can be doers. These people are the people who get things done; be it for themselves or for someone else. People can be downers. These people being down not only themselves but those around them as well. Typically, their kind is unhealthy and parasitic to the surrounding world. People can optimistic yet others can be pessimistic. They can walk around with fake smiles saying fake things or they can be genuinely happy, saying everything that's in their heart.
Together, these people, and all the others, make up society.

However, at the same time there's users, cheaters, stealers, liars, snakes and cons. It is these people that taint the good heart of the young. They steal from you right out from under your nose.

I've seen alcoholism and how it consumes people. I've seen the struggle that they go through, that never seems to get conquered. I've seen them fall back to their old ways. I've seen failure in the eyes of the strong. I've seen success in the souls of the determined. All of these people I have seen and I'm only a young twenty years old.

I've loved and lost. Used and been used. Cheated and been cheated on. I've won some and lost many others. I've hurt and been hurt. I've broken a heart and mended another, just to watch it break again. I've tried the new to forget the old. I've gone back to the old to hurt the new.

It was all of these people that made me really start thinking to myself today. With kind words from a friend I realized the mistakes I have made in my past. I can't change what I've done, nor will I ever be able to. I can't take back the things I've said and I can't go back and say the things I should have.

The only thing you can do with your past is learn from it.
Beyond learning, you can remember what you want and forget the rest.

None of what I've done or who I've met has made me a bad person. It has brought me to where I am today to know the people that I know today. Of course there's things I would change if I could, but that's the beauty in life, when one door closes, two, three, four others open.

I am a strong, beautiful, independent woman who can be as successful, if not more, than the next. This, beyond all else, is what I must remember when it comes to people; when it comes to me and when it comes to you, whoever you may be.