Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of all, I’m convinced, is the fear of being disliked. At least for me, it was. As a young teenage girl, facing high school head on is tough. Whether it be the first day of freshman year or the hundredth day as a junior. It all appears equally in my mind, equally hard, equalling diminishing, and equally fearful and ruthless.
Walking the halls filled with familiar faces, each passing with their own story, I still feel so alone in that place. That place filled with students, some eager to learn and some ready to drop out. That place filled with teachers, excited for new challenges and dreadful of the cruel kids that await them. That place filled with mixed emotions composed of anger, sadness, fear, and happiness. That place we are forced to go to day after day, with expectations all too high of us, and failure waiting in our futures. As much as it hurts our teachers, peers, and parents, when we let them down, they don’t see how much we hurt, too. They don’t see our pain. They don’t see how we struggle to achieve their goals and be more than they want us to be. They don’t see the fears we face when we walk those treacherous halls, towering over us, making us feel smaller than we are, lesser than we are.
High school. A place adolescents ages fourteen to eighteen go to learn the wonders of the world, from the pythagorean theorem to Romeo & Juliet. We learn how to deal with problems we may face as adults. We learn to find density, calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle, when and where to use a semicolon, and how, after WWII, women started to gain individuality while working in factories. When we learn we must further our education, spend thousands of dollars, waste countless hours, and work so many holidays just to be able to have a chance at a job that pays well enough over minimum wage to be able to make it on your own. But when do we learn how to be happy while doing it.
They say happiness should come easy, but how can it be easy when I’m so worried about what that senior thought of my outfit or if my mom was proud of my grade in English or if my dad will yell at me to check my oil or if my friends were going to stick around or ditch me or where I’ll sit at lunch or who will run with me in gym class or will I have a partner in science. How can happiness come so easily when I’m so worried of everyone else around me and being good enough for them. How can happiness come so easily when I’m so worried of who likes me.
Perhaps being disliked is a tragedy we must face, or perhaps, it’s something my head made up in its anxiety clustered brain. Perhaps none of it matters. Perhaps everything will be okay.
