Old Life, Meet New Life

I like to categorize my life by three major time periods: childhood, old life, and new life. My childhood and my old life are very closely connected but I have great memories of my childhood and terrible memories of my old life so I like to keep them separate. My old life ended when I moved to Cleveland, at least that's what I tell most people. Really, my old life ended when my ex-boyfriend, let's call him Draco, and I broke up. We had been dating for a very, very long time and my sense of self was tremendously influenced by his presence and meaning in my life. Looking back, I know now to never let another person have that much say in the person you are. Because we had been dating for so long we had many of the same friends and, of course, we participated in all the same social activities. We are both social creatures so we did a lot of stuff like parties, hanging out at bars, seeing live bands, organizing movie nights, etc. After we broke up my new life began. Our mutual friends chose to abandon me in favor of him, our mutual passtimes became his property, and I was left with the task of discovering myself and reinventing who I wanted to be. I knew a lot about who I didn't want to be so in my new life I resolved to leave my old life behind as completely as possible. I just didn't want anything to do with anything we used to share because, at first, it was too painful, and now it's just not interesting. Consequently, I moved to Cleveland and made new, fabulous friends, found new, fabulous places to hang out, learned I enjoy new, fabulous hobbies, and created a new, fabulous lifestyle for myself. Draco is out of my life and I couldn't be happier as a result. Frankly, he is a total tool and I am sad I wasted so much time in my life believing he wouldn't always be a tool. Summarily, I am 1000% happy in my new life. Now, today I was walking down the hallway enjoying my new life when my old life stepped out in front of me with a smile and reeking of bullshit. Just like that, just when in the last 18 months I finally started to relax and not worry about encountering my old life, my old life was right in front me and looking me in the eye. I did what any new, fabulous person does and gracefully (with maturity) looked right back in it's eye and said hello. As I walked away I realized it's impossible to fully extract yourself from one life as you enter another. I also realized it's ok to still have some of those connections and sometimes the old life and new life can coexist as parrallel realities. I may not be active in the old life anymore but it's still an inescapable element of my basic being.