Go With Your Gut and Revise With Your Heart

"At one point everyone grows up. Whether it’s from an infant to a toddler or a teen to an adult, everyone has to grow up. All this time I’ve been growing. From the first day of Jr.High I’ve gone up three shoe sizes, grown five inches and figured out that normal isn’t enough for me. I could be the stereotypical teenager everyone envisions, sneaking out and doing stupid things, or I could do what I’ve been doing for the past three years. Just being me. It can be as simple as my cat noises or as complicated as my personality, but either way, it’s all been me. I’ve had my moments where I’ve lost myself time and time again, and that’s why it’s time to leave. Over the past three years I’ve realized that “We fear rejection, want attention, crave affection and dream of perfection”. It’s a quote that defines everything about these past few years. The past three years especially have displayed me truly reenacting this quote.
“We fear rejection.” Rejection; to refuse to have, take, recognize, etc. Rejection is one of the worst feelings anyone can experience, especially when you work hard. Walking into this school I was oblivious as to what was about to come. In the first month, things were turning out pretty good. I had a stable social life and my friends were more important to me than anything. I remember just loving them. The relationship I was starting to form with these people was completely different from the mediocre friendships in elementary school. We coordinated clothes and wrote cute little notes for each other and I may not have realized it, but I was really happy. This was brand new for me. In elementary school I was so used being alone that this was a fresh start. My friendships grew stronger with every excursion and carried on into my second year. It definitely got easier in the second year. I had established friends and realized how things worked around the school. I knew who I could trust and who I could really be myself around. This was losing myself; Chapter one. It really happened over a span of about a month. My friendships were slipping through my fingers. I could feel myself becoming distant and losing people I cared about. Lines were drawn and eventually regained, but through my first chapter of losing myself, I found more of myself. It takes a long time for me to get over things. It takes me ages to realize and take in what happened. I was fearing the rejection. I didn’t want to admit I was being rejected. After realizing the rejection things got better. My friendships expanded into something a lot more different. My third year I thought I had everything. I had great friends and I was graduating a year early. Knowing it was our last year, my friends and I wanted to make it last. We wanted to make sure that we had the best time and savored every moment because, you only live once. Chapter 2 was more or less self rejection. Looking back I think we lived a little too much. We started putting a lot of trust on each other’s shoulders and eventually with all that weight you collapse, some harder than others. I collapsed so hard it crushed me. In one week I went from “Friends with anyone and everyone” to “I can count all my friends on one hand”. I got to a point where I was in so much pain that I wanted to give up. I was rejecting myself this time. I never realized how weak I was until this chapter of my life started. It was painful to go to school and I was honestly a mess. I would break down often and that’s when I realized I was a lot stronger than this.
“Want attention.” Doesn’t everyone want attention? They may hide it or not admit it and maybe I’m wrong but in a small school like this, attentions an easy thing to get. A lot of people, including me, don’t understand that the more interpretations we gather, the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole. When people interpret things they hear, they interpret it into a way that’s easy for themselves and others to understand. Dieting translates to eating disorder and friendly is thought of as fake. You can’t stop interpretations but you can always set the record straight. It took me a good three years and counting to understand how to get the record straight. You can tell people that what they’re hearing is a lie (which translates to “the person who told me is lying”) or let it be. Let them think whatever. I wish I could let them think freely and talk about me, but it gets aggravating. It’s a pet peeve. Next to split ends and messy handwriting, it was one thing I hated. I just had to prove everyone wrong. When I hear that I’m the topic of someone’s discussion my impulse is confrontation. I go straight up to them and get angry. This has happened so many times I can’t even keep count. This is the thing that always gets me in trouble. I don’t know how to constructively confront people. It gets out of hand because of my anger. It’s the kind of attention that I always get but never want.
“Craving affection”. Everyone wants affection in one way or another. They want to be accepted. At least I know I do. It’s the classic storyline. Take Matilda for example. Matilda is a special girl with oblivious parents; she just wants to be loved by someone. Eventually she is adopted by her teacher Miss. Honey and they both get the loving family they’ve dreamed of. It’s like I’m living a movie. I have that affection. Even if it is mostly from one person its still affection. I always wanted that one person that I could talk about everything with. I can tell her about my awkward moments and share our weird obsession with Adam Levine. It’s the relationship that makes everything seem okay. I could be dying and this girl would make it okay. Going through what I’ve been through especially these past few months, I don’t know how I would do it. I don’t know how other people got by because everyone needs that rock. Everyone needs someone to keep them going and for me that’s what’s important. She literally makes my life. She makes me tryout cupcakes and flips out on people who are trying to talk over me. She’s the kind of affection people miss out on. The kind of affection that drives people to a point where they have to throw away everyone that can’t offer that kind of affection.
“Dream of perfection”. To me perfection is achievable. Over the past three years I’ve reached my own level of perfection. I’ve grown up without really growing up. When you grow up, trust becomes nonexistent, we become something we said we never would, goodbye is forever and everything becomes impossible. So why would you want to grow up so fast? I miss being little, but like I said you have to grow up. In a way this school made me stronger. If I had been the regular teenager that went to my Jr.High I wouldn’t have been bullied this way. I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble over a handful of allegations. Being at this school has taught me that I’m not a quitter when it comes to these things. I’m not the type of person to let things go. Walking into this school I thought I would achieve what I used to think was perfection. Walking into this school I didn’t really have my label. Now I know that labels are the epitome of bullying but it’s a label that I’ve given myself. I’m the girl who gets all her quotes from Drake songs and Tumblr, the kind of person that expects the best and gets the worst and I’m the girl who tries to stay strong but breaks down; A lot actually. I’m like a cheap plastic toy. Sometimes it’s hard to stay strong because when people know that you are strong, they think its okay to hurt you over and over again. They think you’re strong enough to take another one of their low blows. The past 540 days has taught me something that a normal Jr.High wouldn’t teach me. This school has taught me that being you is really hard. A lot of people won’t accept you and reject you. They’ll push you away to be the center of attention. They’ll ignore you if you can’t offer the affection they want, but all in all it’s the perfection you achieve. It’s the perfection you achieve when you graduate knowing that all the stupid things you did was because you were being yourself. I was doing me. All my life I’ve persevered. I’ve pushed through everything even if there was a little doubt. This Jr.High was different. There were things I had to push through but this time I couldn’t. This school was the one thing that made me really want to quit. The day I got my acceptance letter I screamed with joy. Now? I’m only screaming with pain. The level of emotional stress this school has put on me was almost the breaking point. It was almost the point where I was going to quit. Then again, if you thought I was going to quit before I left; dream on. It was painful and it wasn’t easy but the best things in life don’t come easy. The best things in life are yet to come. Losing all my friends, losing my mental stability; it was all part of this game. It was all part of this game that people thought I wanted to play. To them it was a game, and to me it was my sanity."