How One Day of High School Changed My Ability to Trust
Some things stay with us a lifetime and shape the people we become
I’ve been out of high school for 20 years now. A lot has happened in that time — I’ve graduated college, got married, had children of my own. Yet, sometimes it still feels like yesterday.
I can still remember clipping my thick bangs back so they’d be out of my face. I was trying to grow them out as bangs weren’t in anymore in 2000. I can hear my mom tell my sister and I we were leaving for school in 10 minutes, so we’d better be ready by then.
In the fall of 2000, we’d just come back from the BIG vacation. It was the one my parents had saved and scrimped for YEARS for — a week-long trip to Disney World. I was in the 10th grade. My older sister was a senior and my little brother was in 2nd grade. As much as I loved the trip, I did wish my parents had done it a bit sooner, like when I loved Disney Princesses and wasn’t a goth kid hiding out as a preppie.
We had a lot of fun on that trip. My sister and I actually got along pretty great that week. I loved seeing my little brother with his favorite Disney characters. My parents even went 90 miles out of the way on the trip to Florida from New York, just so I could visit the place Dawson’s Creek was filmed.
