Talk to high school's memories
May. 20th, 2003 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dotintheskyThere were no temptresses in my high school, only the perpetually deluded. We called them the Vogue Squad behind their backs. They sashayed in their bland Gap jeans, puckered petal-red lips, and tiny tank tops to the cheers of the boys in the Rugby team. They wanted so badly to impress.
Everyone was blind in high school. Importance was given to what was superficial, what wouldn't last. It was more important to wear the right jeans, the right shoes, than be honest and up front about what you were feeling. Whoever you thought was your friend might turn their back on you the next day. If you found a small group of people who you really trusted, you felt blessed. And you could feel the growls of the ones left outside your circle, like hungry wolves.
When I moved schools, the first people I made friends with were never the ones who would turn into my best friends. The wrong people clung to me at first, maybe desperate, and maybe hopeful I would see something new in them that hadn't been seen and squashed by everyone else in the school. If there is such a thing as Stalker-light, or Stalker-Diet, than I was a connoisseur. I had to find ways of discarding these first "friends" when I eventually fell in with the ones I truly connected with. Their shame when I avoided them only made their attempts to stretch our friendship even more wrong.
Harmony in high school was sitting during the break and not bolting for the exit. We couldn't get out anyway: a metal grill was lowered over the entrance after all the students were in. You had to be a genius in disappearance acts if you wanted out. Being bad was good luggage to carry around. It gave you respect. Smoking in school, skipping classes, bad-mouthing teachers in a creative way: everyone stuck to their favourite cliché.
Some people were marked. It was as if an invisible scarlet letter had been tattooed to their foreheads. Everyone could see it, except themselves. Perhaps those people were always marked, even as children, even now as adults. Forever condemned to be alone. How much did I fight to not be that marked person. Because of that fear, I didn't come out as gay in high school. I was scared of violence, even if just in words. The divisions were always there, between the groups of friends hoarded around the cafeteria's tables. Those divisions expanded and retracted based on gossip, lies and general ill will towards other students. Everyone was angry and willing to blame the shit of the world on someone else.
The icing is the realisation that those experiences were average, mundane. Remembering just the negative is easy, but it can't blot out the good times as well. I can retrace my steps based on the bad things we did, the people we hurt, but I can also remember my own tormentors, and how I have grown from them. High school memories fall away with time, and everything now seems a caricature, something to poke and laugh at.
I had a good time in high school because of my friends.
Everyone was blind in high school. Importance was given to what was superficial, what wouldn't last. It was more important to wear the right jeans, the right shoes, than be honest and up front about what you were feeling. Whoever you thought was your friend might turn their back on you the next day. If you found a small group of people who you really trusted, you felt blessed. And you could feel the growls of the ones left outside your circle, like hungry wolves.
When I moved schools, the first people I made friends with were never the ones who would turn into my best friends. The wrong people clung to me at first, maybe desperate, and maybe hopeful I would see something new in them that hadn't been seen and squashed by everyone else in the school. If there is such a thing as Stalker-light, or Stalker-Diet, than I was a connoisseur. I had to find ways of discarding these first "friends" when I eventually fell in with the ones I truly connected with. Their shame when I avoided them only made their attempts to stretch our friendship even more wrong.
Harmony in high school was sitting during the break and not bolting for the exit. We couldn't get out anyway: a metal grill was lowered over the entrance after all the students were in. You had to be a genius in disappearance acts if you wanted out. Being bad was good luggage to carry around. It gave you respect. Smoking in school, skipping classes, bad-mouthing teachers in a creative way: everyone stuck to their favourite cliché.
Some people were marked. It was as if an invisible scarlet letter had been tattooed to their foreheads. Everyone could see it, except themselves. Perhaps those people were always marked, even as children, even now as adults. Forever condemned to be alone. How much did I fight to not be that marked person. Because of that fear, I didn't come out as gay in high school. I was scared of violence, even if just in words. The divisions were always there, between the groups of friends hoarded around the cafeteria's tables. Those divisions expanded and retracted based on gossip, lies and general ill will towards other students. Everyone was angry and willing to blame the shit of the world on someone else.
The icing is the realisation that those experiences were average, mundane. Remembering just the negative is easy, but it can't blot out the good times as well. I can retrace my steps based on the bad things we did, the people we hurt, but I can also remember my own tormentors, and how I have grown from them. High school memories fall away with time, and everything now seems a caricature, something to poke and laugh at.
I had a good time in high school because of my friends.
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no subject
on 2003-05-20 10:00 am (UTC)My first year I was there I hung around the popular crowd, which worked for about a year until I just got tired of it. Everyone seemed to be so fake, that I couldn't handle it anymore.
I finally stumbled on what one would call the "geeky" group of the high school, but the funny thing is that no one ever made fun of me because of it. I think it was because people knew that I didn't give a shit what they thought of me, which allowed me to be as crazy and zany as I was back in high school.
Of course now I've matured, and looking back I did some weird things that I would never consider doing now. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
Re:
on 2003-05-21 01:50 am (UTC)the popular people in my high school were only popular in their heads... nobody else thought they were interesting, funny, or smart. I had 5 good friends in high school and the rest came from other schools... so going to school was just a kill time until I could leave and meet my other friends.
Are you still in touch with your high school friends?
Re:
on 2003-05-21 11:44 am (UTC)Re:
on 2003-05-22 01:34 am (UTC);o)