But I also remember the segregation I felt. The bullies. The comments girls and guys alike made about me. My teeth were funny. My hair wasn't dyed right. I wasn't smart enough to hang out with the AP kids, nor was I dumb enough to hang out with the basic level kids. My music taste totally wasn't cool enough to hang out with the cool girls. I wore sweatpants to school one time and three girls called me lazy and poor because of it. I was too fat for softball or basketball... or any sport, for that matter. I remember asking a guy to junior prom and he laughed at me in front of everyone. I just wasn't enough for most of the kids in school.
I just remember wanting to change for everyone, making them like me. I changed my wardrobe. I dyed my platinum blonde hair back to my natural hair color and cut most of my hair off in one sitting. I changed the shows I watched and threw away my Evanescence, MCR, and 90's playlists to exchange them for the likes of Lil Wayne and Wiz Khalifa (which is, to this day, one of the biggest things I regret doing). I took classes I really couldn't handle and tried to apply to as many clubs as I could so that people could find me cool.
And it actually worked. I made new friends. I was involved in school and people knew my name. Girls started to compliment on my outfits and I even had a boyfriend for a short time. I played football... and people thought that I was decent. I injured my knee a week before graduation and so many people gathered around me to motivate me to walk at graduation. I felt like a star.
And then we graduated. My graduation party had come around and no one from my graduating class showed up... except one. I remember getting screamed at by my stepdad, asking why we made a big deal out of my graduation if none of my friends were even going to show up. And that's when I realized something about high school:
High school is supposed to be used as a tool to learn things about what you may experience outside of your sacred fortress, not be a battle of the social climb. These 100, 200, 300... hell, 1,000 people you will be walking with at graduation probably won't be in your life after you graduate. Why spend thirteen years climbing for social attention when all your work is going to render useless in reality?
I graduated with 183 kids. Out of 183 kids, I talk to two. One of them I work with, and the other has been my best friend since middle school. People grow up and grow apart... it's a way of life. And that's okay! There's nothing wrong with it. However, what is wrong is when kids focus their life on climbing the social ladder and impressing everyone.
I dealt with it for years. Almost a year after high school, I saved a ton of money and I got my braces thrown in. Sure, I won't see 99% of my graduating class until 2016, but when I made the appointment, I remember telling myself that this was going to show all the kids that picked on me for all those years that I was actually a pretty girl that could do cool things and that they missed out. Even then, I was still doing things for other people and never seeing the most important person I should be impressing... and that's myself. It's important to remember that people come and go. Others are more than comfortable with walking away from each other, but at the end of the day, can you walk away from yourself?
So today, I bought my first pair of sweatpants in five years (they've got pockets!), put on my glasses, threw my hair in a bun, and wiped off my makeup. I'm lounging in my bed, listening to a John Mayer album and planning a day to build a blanket fort so I can read in it. I'm on Pinterest as I write this looking for healthy recipes so I can start properly losing weight. And tomorrow, I'm gonna cook a lot. Because I don't care. I'll go ahead and take a picture of my chicken stir fry and no one will complain. And besides, if they do, they're just jealous that they can't have my delicious stir fry in the first place.
The people who matter won't mind silly, minute things about you... like wearing a pair of sweatpants, gaining a few pounds, or the kind of music on your iPod. Those who mind won't matter. Surround yourself with people who genuinely like you and do cool stuff with them. It's more beneficial to your life than surrounding yourself with people that make you force yourself to change who you are, even after you'll never see them.
At the end of the day, I sometimes regret changing myself for these people. My hair, my clothes, even my braces sometimes. But because of them, I've become a stronger and better person. I remember a girl asking me what I would change if I could go back... change the fact that I was bullied; change people's minds so they would come to my graduation party? Getting my braces? And I told her no. I wouldn't change a thing. All these experiences have made me the person I am, which I find myself to be a very caring person who's always open for conversation and laughter. I wouldn't be Carly Miller without the things I experienced in high school. So to all the girls who bullied me, the guys who turned me down because of my buck teeth, that girl who hid my clothes in the locker room, the boys that called me fat every day junior year, and countless others... thank you. Because of you, I'm showing the best person I've ever been to the best people I've ever surrounded myself with. And I'm totally okay with that.
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