True. I am still in the process of patching myself up and remembering. As for reminiscence and unresolved issues...

Well, I'm going to have to look at the age. I seemed like I was seventeen in one area, and at seventeen, I definitely had my school issues. Plus this whole "I'm a bad person and deserve to be punished" thing. As a preteen, I was going through some changes in terms of being at a private school for the first time, but I (and I know this sounds odd) actually have some pretty happy memories of that school by and large (except for a rivalry with a certain girl, a period where a friend of mine was kind of a jerk, and a period where I couldn't get to sleep because I read the synopsis of Cujo and thought that rabid dogs were coming after me). That was also where I got into Star Wars, including the Expanded Universe (which I also read in high school -- I'd sit in class or on the bleachers and just read. I was very much a bookworm). And when I first was a teen in college, I had a lot of issues, including the matter of the...friends I talked about before. (And I started to realize that they might have been a factor in setting off my intrusive thoughts in 2013, plus the matter of what set it all off -- I tried getting them to stop what they were doing, which I probably shouldn't have done, and left the community I was in behind, which I should have, and then when I couldn't reply to one of them thanks to technical difficulties, the person in question blamed me for it. Like I didn't reply to her out of spite or something. So I did come to grips last night with how awful they really were, even though I really did nearly have a freak out over it. I do feel sorry for them though, a bit -- they had problems of their own) And then there was me having to take on a more mature role after my mom had surgery and my brother went through a rough patch -- I think I've been trying to act all mature and such ever since. I've grown to really admire Molly from Storm of the Century, ending aside, because of how kind she is, how generally in control and kind of a leader she is...those are kind of things I can't be. And I'm worried that if I mess up somehow, break down, things like that...I'm failing at maturity.

Maybe that's my problem. One of my problems. In a way, I really feel the need to be perfect, but honestly? I can't be. It doesn't work like that. I guess in a way I was also trying to deny any aspects of the people I had issues with (or potential aspects, at least) in myself. And I guess we are back to the Shadow thing again.