I Miss Myself

I became what I used to hate.

I wanted to write a story about my old buddies on EP, so I was going through the [i]exported.doc[/i] that we all got when EP shut down. I was looking through my stories, through my messages and I noticed how different I used to be back then, at the beginning of my journey. I had tough times back then too and things were pulling me down, but I was so positive and I was always looking from an optimistic point of view. I could feel determination and resilience in the words I read. I had a spontaneous go getter attitude, an idealist that couldn't accept "no", not even "maybe".
I remeber blocking somebody at one point, the first person I befriended on the site. I did it because she told me she's giving up on life. I see now how heartless I must've came across for doing that. However my reasoning for that was because I couldn't understand nor wanted to, the concept of somebody just giving up. It just really made me angry, especialy because I was always trying to encourage her to be more optimistic and to fight for what she believed.
Now, I became softer or at least that's how I present myself, I became more emphatic and flexible to other people's opinions and perceptions. Is this a good thing? Is this a side effect of maturity? All I know, from what I read, is that my past self wouldn't have accepted me. Was I influenced that much by this community or maybe even by life, to the point of polishing off all my drive and instincts? Was I brainwahed into accepting "giving up" as a normal thing to say?