When I was in high school, the one thing that I absolutely could not stand was someone talking about a bad decision or a mistake I made. It’s something that’s always kind of bothered me. I didn’t like it when family members would reminiscence about my time in high school, when I was an emotional nightmare, and talk about some specific thing I’d done that, in hindsight, was a Bad Choice™.

Maybe it’s just me, but I got tired really quickly of it. It felt like even if I was doing better, it didn’t matter. My best wasn’t good enough because people knew I’d once screwed up. Even if I never brought it up again, even if I turned out to be a really stable, happy, and healthy person - people still liked to occasionally talk about my mistakes.

I figured out a solution that seemed to work well. I realized that by apologizing sooner and showing that I’m trying to be a better person, people weren’t going to focus as much on what I used to be like. They wouldn’t talk as much about my past mistakes. That still didn’t feel like enough, though. Even though I was trying - and sort of succeeding, maybe? - to redirect peoples’ attention, there’d be family members who used to want to quickly talk or bring up my past yet again at random intervals.

This was about when I realized that I had two options: shut down the conversation and redirect it, or just EXPOSE MYSELF FIRST. I picked the latter option, obviously.

What I’ve found is that people tend to not bring up my mistakes as much. Maybe they do behind my back, but it’s never really happened to my face once the conversation is over/has moved to another topic. I’ll be the person who’s first in line to air my dirty laundry, show everybody my receipts, and expose myself with either a humorous story or a serious, one-on-one conversation.

Beating people to the punch has the weirdest emotional pay-off. For a couple minutes, I’m in the spotlight. People are paying attention to me. I’ll be the first person to say what everybody else is probably thinking or feeling about what I’m saying, but won’t verbalize to my face out of social niceties. I’ll be the one to make self-deprecating jokes and just really go there when it comes to talking about my bad choices. But even when I do this, I try to make it clear I’m not justifying my behavior. It’s bad. I know it, you know it, and everybody else knows it.

I don’t mind exposing myself these days. I like being the first one to admit I’ve screwed up, mostly because I feel like it takes power away from other people. I mean that in the sense that I can show that I’m self-aware to know that whatever I did was f**ked up, and I’ll change it. It’s just not going to stop me from being the first person to talk about it.

By putting all parts of me out there, it’s been easier for me to figure out which people are worth being friends with and which people aren’t. I can tell what peoples’ reactions towards me are based on when I share an accomplishment, say something to nice them just for the sake of being nice, and when I expose myself (yet again). I’ve realized that the people who really want to commiserate on only the bad, toxic things are people who do not belong in my life, because they’re a complete drain. I don’t have the time to be emotionally exhausted and have a mental toll taken on me by seeing those people. The people who tend to acknowledge the bad parts but focus on the good are people I want to be around.

As weird as it is, being way more open has been only beneficial for me. I don’t want to sound like I’m fishing for compliments or validation, because I’m not, but I’m not ever going to love myself. There are parts of me that I appreciate, and a lot of parts I don’t. But by being the first person to expose my mistakes and bad decisions, it’s actually been a lot easier to live with who I am. At least I know that I’m going to be honest and transparent about who I am, even if it’s really uncomfortable for everybody listening, myself included. That’s not something that everybody can say about themselves.