Did Anyone Actually Like High School?

sera
sera
Sep 2, 2018 · 4 min read

I’m not going to pretend as though I am the first person in the world that had a rough time in high school; I don’t think the ages between 14–18 are meant to be productive in the slightest degree. However, I am the only me out there, and my experiences affect me to this day.

I was by all accounts a happy child, growing up with expatriate parents in picturesque Canadian cities with the odd jaunt back to the homeland. Somewhere in adolescence my happiness started to fade, as I suspect it does for many.

I still remember my first day of high school at an undisclosed school, and the fear I felt resonates with me to this day. I remember standing in black flats, black skinny jeans, and a striped black and white top in the cafeteria that was also used as the auditorium — a foreshadow to where I would spend my next four years. Curly haired and armed with curiosity as to what monstrosity of an education establishment I had landed myself into, I observed my fellow ninth-graders.

Flip flops, florescent tops and shorts, backpacks being flung in all directions; I truly knew then that this was going to be difficult.

I did, thanks be to God, make a lot of friends throughout it. Some I keep in touch with to this day, love them to bits. I don’t overall hate that I experienced what I did, but years later the microaggressions and lack of teacher protection became more and more vivid to the point where they sent me into a panic attack in my kitchen at four in the morning, silently weeping at the reality that maybe it wasn’t just childish teasing and that just maybe I wasn’t overreacting after all.

One of my close friends sometime in Grade 11 revealed to me that sitting beside someone who hated me for no foreseeable reason had made her also grow to hate me. She offered no explanation as to why that was because there simply is no reason. The more negative things you hear about someone at that age, the more likely you are to start seeing them in that light. I was seventeen years old, maybe a little too attached to William Shakespeare and didn’t know how to style my fringe but for all intents and purposes I was harmless to everyone but myself. Largely stuck in my own head, I was juggling the concept of cultural identity, courses, and making sure I had time to read in between trying to stubbornly make myself into someone who did sports (I still don’t do sports, I do like to watch them though!).

I’ll be on a bus, maybe even walking somewhere, getting groceries or reading on my balcony when a sudden dread sets in and I pray, so hard: please, please never let anyone feel the way I did years after high school. Some will say that I have stuck myself in this vortex of memories, really what I describe this as is the dread that someone else will be sitting in a university lecture, and a single word will send them spiralling into a tunnel of unwelcome memories with new realisations.

I had some wonderful teachers, people I still thank in my head occasionally. However, I can never forgive or forget the ones that turned a blind eye to what was happening. Those that told my parents “Oh, boys will be boys.”, those that didn’t realise at the time what they were saying was so, so not okay. Those that poked fun at an insecurity and those that almost encouraged undesirable behaviour in the classroom. Still in the back of mind I think of what they said in moments of deep anxiety, and I truly have to push myself through them with positive affirmations before they overwhelm me anymore.

A friend I still speak to recently sent me a message that read “I distanced myself from you when you moved to Toronto, this city is so full of shit tbh, I didn’t want to be a reminder of all of that for you. But I want you to know that I’m always gonna be there for you.” The ironic part is that, those people I still reach out to and interact with are what made it all okay and to know that I wasn’t the castaway after all gives me a warm feeling that I cannot even begin to describe.

Maybe I am the outcast, and maybe people did hate me because they didn’t understand me. I’ll never know the answer to that, but it also doesn’t matter anymore. My time has passed.

I’m still scared of many of my former classmates, for years I couldn’t step foot into my “hometown” out of fear that I would run into people who were by all accounts my terrorisers. I suppose though, I have no reason to worry about that anymore.

I am thankful that years later I was able to see what it all was because I am at peace now.

Moral of the story is: ?

sera

Written by

sera

political science grad, trying this writing thing out.