Things I've learnt since leaving high school #446

Maybe some of you will read this and not be able to relate at all or maybe you'll read it and know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a blog post I've been thinking about for a while because high school (now that I look back - it's be a while) was such 'foundational' (bro is that even a word? Fuck it) yet limiting experience. I guess you could lump University into that category too. You're put in this compound, wait... campus is probably a better word, and 'forced' to make friends with these people who circumstantially have found themselves in the very same place, for whatever reason. These people become your friends, your peers. You dress the same everyday so you already have something in common - boom, friends. Little do you know you're probably very different people. You'll grow up to live completely different lives and realise that you're uniform is no longer what you have in common it's the fact that you all went through that very same experience together - boom, high school clique. It's a good thing. High School inadvertently was the one place that will ever force you into making friends with people you wouldn't necessarily come across later in life - later on you'll have control over your circumstances and consequently the people you surround yourself with. I recently had a conversation with one of my high school friends about how different she felt to the friends we had been around for so long. And not in a bad way, my high school friends are some the closest friends I have, but there are some really freeing things about realising you're completely different people. And, if you don't want to you don't have to hang out with people you learned just to tolerate. 

Maybe it makes me a little bit behind that I'm only thinking about this now but I guess I'm reminded of it each time I come home. There can be something very toxic about slipping back into that high school 'rumor mill'. That's some scary shit. This might be coming across as a rant when it really isn't. It's more like "oh yeah. Like. Yeah. That makes sense now". Get me? Nah maybs not? Oh, k. Well here's a fun list instead. 

Things I've learnt since leaving high school:

1. Uniforms are actually cool.

2. Hyperbola's actually come up in real life conversation. 

3. Travel is the best way to understand the kind of people you want to surround yourself with.

4. Also, going somewhere you know no-one is liberating.

5. Teachers are people that like school too much. I also have friends (who I love very much) that are teachers, but soz 'bout it - you guys are cray cray. Keep up the good work because I couldn't do it. Ew, children.

6. If you're not harming anyone in anyway then others opinions of what you're doing do not matter.
You're letting yourself down if you're even slightly affected by an opinion of any soul living outside of your skin (thanks Diaz). 

7. Rumors are toxic. Ignore. Bro.

8. Jealousy will ruin you. Ugly shit right there. 

9. People who lie for the sake of acceptance will never truly be themselves. 

10. Those relationships I had when I was a teenager were ambitious but doomed from the beginning. 

11. Music will pull you through anything. 

12. Learning to enjoy your own company is so important. Friends will come and go, relationships (most) will end, family members will die but it's just you in the end. Is that morbid? Meh.
13. Everyone is different. Choosing to see the good in everybody is your biggest asset. 

14. High school was just a period in time. I remember it. University happened. I remember that too.

15. I'm happy.

M x