I’m Still Learning to Let Go of High School
The night before my 30th birthday, I messaged the person who was my childhood best friend. A decade earlier, at around age 19, I’d deleted her from my Facebook page in a childish attempt at dealing with my emotions (she hadn’t really spoken to me in months and I’d thought it would help me move on). I’m sure that deleting her was exactly what she expected from me at the time.
In high school, I battled anxiety and depression. My friends grew to hate me for it; I wasn’t there for them when they needed me the most. They called me a “drama maker.” I’ve carried the guilt of not being the world’s best teenage friend for the past 13 years. Isn’t that strange, though? A teenager should never be expected to have the social-emotional capacity of an adult, let alone one who was struggling. As a teacher, I would certainly never expect such things from the teenagers who have sat before me in a classroom. They’re kids. How ridiculous.
It hasn’t felt ridiculous, though. It’s felt as real and painful as those long, awful days of being 16.
I guess I messaged my friend that night, both because I was seeking closure and because I was feeling the weight of turning 30. I wondered if she was feeling the same. Looking back now, I can see that it was foolish; a moment of mortality salience.
She never answered.
I understand. She has her reasons just like I had my reasons for messaging her. I’ve never been the silent treatment type. I’m an introvert, but I’m also the type to go on and on about something without giving anyone a moment to breathe. It’s a strange contradiction.
I am not 16 anymore.
This morning, a year after sending that message, it was the 4th of July. Leia (not her real name) woke up early, ready for a day of fireworks and food. When it was time for a nap, I laid her down and found myself randomly thinking about high school. I don’t know what exactly triggered it. I do know that, ever since my former foster daughter, Jessy*, was reunified, holidays have been extremely difficult for me. My mind drifts to her absence. Is that what triggered thoughts of my past?
Regardless, I do this sometimes. I wonder how everyone is doing. I hope everyone is well. I hope everyone has forgiven me. But — for what, exactly? Being a depressed kid? Having severe anxiety? Being a fellow selfish teenager?
I know that there are people on this planet who didn’t make any mistakes in high school, but I am not one of them. I always joke with people that I peaked in 1st grade, when I was reading chapter books so quickly that my mother was asked to let me skip a grade (she didn’t). As a child, I was intelligent and sensitive. In high school, I was introverted and terrified; emotional and intense.
I was too much and I knew it, but I didn’t know how to be less than what I was. My poor mother just wanted a popular cheerleader named Summer. Instead, she got a writer who was more like winter.
I fell in love with my high school English teacher in a dramatic and overwhelming fashion. (Of course it was my English teacher!) I was involved in many misunderstandings and miscommunications. I lied to my friends in order to fit in with them, as they went on dates and had physical relationships that I wasn’t having. I hid my insecurities behind baggy cardigans. I was absorbed with my self, my future, and my thoughts. I wanted to be a movie star, but I was just a teenage drama queen. I tried to fake it until I made it, but I never really made it at all.
I think that, assuming you didn’t hit someone with a bus or something (hello, Mean Girls), what happens under the age of 25 is a debt that should be forgiven and forgotten. I wish this were the case. Your brain isn’t even finished developing.
I cannot turn back time. I cannot go back and be a better friend or a more evolved 16-year-old. I can only learn from that time period and hope to teach the children in my life to do better. I can also be grateful that social media wasn’t the phenomenon that it is now. I can’t imagine having to be a teenager in the era of TikTok. I had a Tracfone.
It occurs to me, now, as I creep nervously into my 30s, that real friends do not abandon one another because one friend is struggling. I carry so much guilt for my mistakes as a teenage friend, but the truth is that the treatment my friends gave me for not being who they wanted me to be is a mistake that they, too, made. I understand it — but it was still cruel. Yet, I’m the only one who carries guilt. It’s time to let it go — to let high school go. It’s time to accept that there’s a 3 in front of my age now, not a 1 or even a 2. I hope that, somewhere, they’ve accepted this, too. At the end of the day, we can only really forgive ourselves.
The funny thing is that, because of all I went through as a teenager, I am filled with empathy. I try not to judge others. I think it’s the reason that I reach out to the birth parents of the children we foster. I email them pictures and have the babies make handprint crafts for holiday presents. I want to give them a chance. Would I have always been like this, even if I had been my own mother’s dream teenager? I don’t know.
Embracing the present doesn’t come naturally to me, but the present is all we really have. Yoga has been great for teaching me this, but I don’t practice it as much as I should. I still struggle with being here now, with staring at my spouse and savoring the details. I want to soak up the present with the people who love me no matter how moody, selfish, not enough, or too much I ever was or ever can be.
As Glennon Doyle said, “You will be too much for some people. Those aren’t your people.”
I don’t think 1st grade will have been my peak. I think my peak is still decades and decades away. At least, I hope so.
