I am myself, and there's nothing I can do about it...but why would I?

There are many nights of your life that are the most important, the nights where it doesn't matter if everything goes wrong or if everything goes right. Sure, those nights can change your life, for good or ill, but the important part is that it doesn't matter, they're nights where you can live without the fear of recompense, a night that's easily forgotten, yet can create the person you become. My problem has always been with who I am and what I've become, so this night was important to me.

Tonight was my senior prom.

Now, dances aren't my thing. The last dance (the homecoming dance of my freshman year) I was at, I literally was on my phone the whole time. In my defense, the girl I'd asked to it brought her boyfriend along. Go figure. Even then, when it comes to a girl I truly love enough to have romantic affection for, I will shut down, unable to utter a single word in her presence unless I were to know she felt the same way about me. Meanwhile, every other girl, because of my controlled sociopathism (is that a word?), I find myself easily able to talk to because I have no romantic affection for them. So asking a girl out to prom is kinda hard, because there's the matter of who I'm able to ask and who I want to ask. I asked a girl in my friend group out to prom (spoilers: she said no) because she's the highest on the scale of romantic affection before it gets towards deprecating my social function (all the other girls are cool, but romantically I don't care for them).

good luck trying to figure out how that scale works. I'm pretty sure I don't entirely know, and I made it up!

Luckily, one of my best female friends had another female friend to be my unofficial "date" for the evening. She was alright, albeit a bit awkward towards me, but that was to be expected, as I'd only just met her. She asked me as she drove me home why I didn't just ask a girl I thought was pretty, and to be honest, I actually had to think a moment. Why didn't I? Why didn't I just go with a random girl who was lower on the romantic attraction spectrum (well, I did, but I don't usually make a habit of it)?

It's because...I wanted it to be more genuine than the usual, superficial model of dating. It's like a joke about pussy, I never get it. The idea of asking out a girl I truly love has always been my one and only goal, rather than just asking someone out. It's like I'm playing a game, and I immediately switch to the hardest difficulty, even though I've barely survived the tutorial. I've wanted to conquer my greatest challenge long before I was ready, and that's prevented me from enjoying the game.

There are two main aspects to this blog post: the romantic aspect, which I'll continue on later, and the social aspect, which affected me equally as much.

Tonight I gained so much self-confidence, which seems impossible at one's senior prom unless they get really lucky.

My friends and I first went to a restaurant right next door to have dinner, where my date and my female friend went to go do something, as well as our other friend, leaving me alone with my gay friend, J. To be honest, I thought it was their attempt at being wingmen, but apparently not. Instead, the conversation drifted towards me and how much of a cool person I was. I'd never believed it before, whenever anyone told me how awesome I was, not even by my idol, Lukas, but tonight, it crashed down on me, and I was able to realize how much I was. A great conversationalist, an interesting person, good hair (I always agreed with that one, though). I still had my anxious habit of disbelieving any compliment I had been given (aside from the hair), but it was like that didn't matter. I was me, and I was proud of me, whether I wanted to be or not.

I suddenly felt myself able and willing to be who I am. I wasn't just me, I was me, if that makes any sense at all. There are days when you feel 10% yourself and days you feel 90%, but this was the night, and I felt like 100% myself. There was no emphasis as there always is as to who I should've been or who I could be, tonight was just a night of letting my inner me shine. Everyone else knew that, too. Tonight was just a night where we could be ourselves without the competitive instinct that comes with being a member of society.

Bonus points if anyone can guess which song I've put on my blog this is from without cheating

The entire night, I felt like I had a purpose, and it was to be. Everywhere I went, I didn't feel awkward, I didn't feel the need to be on my phone, I felt like everywhere I was, I was meant to be there. It was the most amazing I'd ever felt socially in a long, long while. More importantly, I knew everyone, and they knew me. So many people said hi to me with a smile on their faces that communicated such genuine appreciation (with the sad exception of Lukas, who left before I could say hello to him. Imagine the best case scenario version of yourself went to your school and was nowhere near the amount of "friend" you wanted him to be. That's Lukas to me, and this is me saying hello to him and that I feel as awesome as he is all the time) and my newfound belief from J's motivational statement was solidified. I was amazing, and I still am.

Back to my romantic aspect of this blog post, I left one of the necklaces my (ex) girlfriend gave me for Christmas at my dad's apartment, and instead decided to focus on myself. It was given to me because she thought of me when she looked at it, and I'd worn it through all that, a constant reminder of who I was in her eyes, and like with many bad relationships, I'd spent so much time thinking of her that I'd forgotten to even consider myself. She broke up with me to think of herself, and that selfish act I'd been annoyed at for so long, no matter how much I'd understood it.

There comes a time when you must finally dispel your negative feelings for the girl that rejected or dumped you. You can forget her, you can ignore her, you can mutter "that bitch" under your breath when she walks by, but she will always be a part of you, no matter how much you run from her. My old crush will always occupy a space in my heart, and it aches slightly whenever I see her happy, but there comes a time when you move on. I moved on with my girlfriend, and my feelings for my old crush were muffled, giving me a new thing to focus on which I now have to move on from in turn.

Tonight was the night I solidified myself, and the night that I forgave her, not a trace of pride or anger in my bandaged heart.

It sucks being dumped. It really does. You've spent so much time relying on someone else and now you're forced to rely on yourself only. Tonight I was forced into the mold of the person I've always wanted to be, and when my unofficial date kissed me goodnight, (my first actual kiss, awkwardly enough) I realized I was comfortable with moving on, even if I still held a candle for her should she return (not with my prom date, she has a boyfriend).

Yeah, shit's good right now. I feel whole. Tonight created me, and though people say they'll forget their senior prom, I never will.

You never forget what...or when made you who you are.