and so naturally, they made their own
friends to hang out with. I don’t really
make friends that easily, and that first
year of high school I only made a few.
This made me feel like a bit of a loser.
My intermediate friends seemed to
make a heap of friends, while I only
had my little group. Mistake #1. Never
be ashamed of your friends or how
many you have. If you like your
friends, screw everyone else’s opinion.
If that makes you a ‘loser’, so be it.
So that was pretty much my first year
of high school. I still had two best
friends from intermediate who I
depended on most, let’s call them
Sally and Jane. The second year I got
more friends. They were all really nice,
but there was one problem. I didn’t
connect with them on the same
wavelength, if you will, as I did with
Sally and Jane. I could talk to them
about all the boring stuff, like school,
homework, how such-in-such was
such a so-in-so, but I couldn’t talk to
them about boys, my feelings, you
know, personal stuff. The thing was,
Jane and Sally had their friends to
hang out with, and although we still
talked out of school, I was beginning
to feel like an outsider. Like I couldn’t
talk to anybody. You see, having no
one to talk to during school is really
hard. It makes the whole high school
experience thing even worse because
there isn’t really anyone there to
distract you from its suckiness. This
continued for most of my second year,
but during the third I was starting to
hang out with my old friends, Sally
and Jane, more, during lunch etc.
Even better was the fact that I had
three classes with Sally. During the
end
of
that
year
I
started
disconnecting myself more from my
‘new’ friends. I started feeling a lot
more positive.
This year, however, my fourth year at
high school, has so far proven to be
perhaps the most straining. Even my
old friends are feeling well, a little old
sometimes. I still love them dearly,
but I’ve found that I’m developing a
few ‘pet peeves’ toward them. I’m
definitely not an expert on friends, but
I think everyone goes through this. I
often feel utterly claustrophobic at
high school, sandwiched between all
the bodies hurrying to class. I often
find myself thinking, what am I doing
here? What is the point? Popular
people come here to socialise. Brainy
people come here to learn. Is there
really any in-between? I’m certainly
not popular, and a lot of the time I
couldn’t care less about learning, so
yes, there must be an in-between, or
am I simply an outlier? An oddity? A
puzzle piece that doesn’t fit? I
certainly
feel
like
it.
The noise of hundreds of petty
conversations suddenly sets my teeth
on edge. I want to get up and run
away from my friends. I want to be
alone. I don’t want to be alone.
I feel so unhappy at school that I can
barely find a reason why I’m there
every day. Is there a reason? Or is it
just some elaborate scheme to keep
teenagers under control five days a
week? Because frankly, I can’t fathom
what’s so important about algebra
and radians and pronouns and what
the hell a quark is and how it’s going
to help us get a job.
Maybe I’m not the most qualified
person to talk about this, but even
though high school is a really sucky
invention, whether you’re a prom
queen or king, a jock, a freak, a geek,