Picture this: Seventeen year old girl. She’s a senior in highschool, but should technically be a junior. She’s graduating early, though, because she compressed the 4th and 5th grade into a single year and jumped straight to 6th. She’s nice— since she’s been a little kid everyone has always talked about how kind she is— that’s been the defining compliment. She’s determined and falls into that overachiever category: plays two sports, honors student, straight A’s, and she got accepted into all the colleges she applied to, and she didn’t just get accepted she got accepted like as in there was a lot of money coming from academic and merit scholarships. She has a future plan worked out, or at least a tentative one because she knows anything and everything can be subject to change. She’s learned that nothing usually goes as you had planned it because nothing that happened to her in highschool had been whatever she thought that it would be. She’s never really been in much trouble; she’s never really landed in the office for any disciplinary infringements. She’s been warned of being dress coded before, but what girl in the United States school system hasn’t? She’s almost had to do community service from having tardies, but she was able to stay punctual long enough for them to reset. She’s never gotten detention or anything like that, well there is no “detention” at her school. See her school is private so they don’t do regular detention. They do RJM’s, Restorative Justice Meetings. The name is sort of funny, she thinks, “Restorative Justice Meeting”. What does that even mean? Who is “justice” being restored for? The student? The school? No one? Everyone? She thinks it’s funny how private schools have to invent fancy names for these regular things. Names that put up a disguise of vaguely positive connotations to what they really are and that, quite honestly, toe the line of misinformation. Anyways, yeah, she sounds like a solid kid, typical golden girl, the classic female overachiever, wouldn’t harm a fly, mild as milk, boring as hell. But wait, what’s this? Somehow, after 17 years of never really being in trouble, within the last three weeks of regular classes she racked up two official RJM’s among a few other trips to the office. Her reputation was thrown into question. She almost failed the easiest honors English class she’s ever taken. A faculty member made up a lie that was so awful it could have totally jeopardized her future, destroyed her life, and essentially ruined her. Her mom had to haul ass to the principal’s office on behalf of her daughter. Honestly, it’s sort of…impressive? Yeah, well, I don’t have to imagine too hard because I f*cking lived through it and today I’m gonna tell you about it.
I feel like that was such a dramatic intro. Like, the hyper specific third person is so mysterious, mildly suspicious, maybe intriguing? I was going for intriguing, but whether or not I achieved my goal is up for you, the reader, to decide. Anyways, today I’m writing about my senior year of highschool.
My senior year of highschool was no walk in the park. Even though I had gone through school in a global pandemic, navigated an entity merger, and helped my family while members grieved the loss of my grandmother, I think the hardest challenges I faced came in that final year. I didn’t know what to expect, necessarily, in my last year of highschool. I knew that whatever way I thought, or wanted, it to go, it probably wouldn’t be that way. I was nervous for senior year to start. What I was most nervous about, though, was that it didn’t really feel like it was my senior year at all, it felt like I should still have another year or two left. How could I be coming to the lasts of highschool when it didn’t feel like it had been that long ago since my firsts or seconds or thirds? The summer ahead of senior year was good and bad. I remember feeling kind of restless. I usually get that way at some point in the summer– this feeling that I want something new, like school, to begin, but, at the same time, as it inches closer I wish summer would last longer, perpetual heat, sweaty clothes, my head dazed from reading in the sun. But on the flip side, I enjoyed going to school. I liked seeing my friends everyday, I liked playing sports, I liked English and history class, and nothing can last forever. And change is good. So, while I was scared, I was also excited to go back, but my envisioned teen movie joy wasn’t fulfilled, which I should have known by now. Every year, I would hold out hope that some cute boy would come and be madly in love with me, that never happened. So, why should I have expected something great? The thing is though, what I was expecting was a good year, what I wanted was simple: to be supported, wanted, accepted, to have fun, but nothing is that simple.
For the first three months of school, August to October, I felt awful about myself. I questioned everything I did or didn’t do, I worried about every detail, I couldn’t think clearly. I was consumed in the worst possible way, eaten alive by my own psyche, but those seeds of self doubt had really been re-planted junior year and were growing into saplings by the time senior year began.
My junior year of highschool was absolutely insane. Our school had merged with its original entity it was born out of and we moved back into the old building. My commute went from ten minutes on country roads with the biggest obstacle being ice patches in the winter and the creek flooding in the spring to thirty minutes with heavy traffic. I was waking up earlier, going to bed later. My grandma was in and out of the hospital. In some ways, during the beginning of junior year I just felt crazy like I was being pulled in so many different directions in a way I hadn’t felt before. I had my personal life and my school life and then within those two big lives there were a bunch of little ones. So, while I was traveling to hospitals in the afternoon to visit my grandma, while I was watching my mom and aunt break down about her health, while I was cooking and cleaning the house for my family, while I was stuck in traffic, I was also going to school full time, I was also in three honors classes, I was also trying to lead a social life and go out with friends, I was the treasurer of student council making an effort for students to have fun and having my efforts be criticized no matter what I did, I was also a crucial member of the volleyball team, It felt like no matter how much I planned ahead, no matter how many reminders I wrote in my planner, no matter how many things I crossed off my to-do list, I was always behind in something; there was always a new thing that I had to do or something that I forgot to do earlier. My grandma’s battle with cancer came crashing down in October. I remember the day she passed away. I actually remember the full details of the weeks leading up to it. Here is an excerpt from my free writing journal on the subject matter:
January 12, 2023
On the freewriting prompt “How many things can fall apart in one day?” This is actually a series of events that happened over a course of three weeks. The week of homecoming I got sick with a cold on Wednesday. By Friday for the homecoming game I was feeling really bad. I was majorly congested, dizzy, and achy. I came in at lunch and played in the game. After the game I went and visited my grandma at the hospital. Then the next day was the dance. I thought I would be able to pull through and go, but by noon decided there was no way. I would have to get through pictures and dinner, a three hour long dance, two hour long after party, and be back at school by 3:00 the next day to clean up, then go to school and play in a volleyball game the next day, and the day after that. That same day my mom and dad picked up a new puppy. The following Monday and Tuesday we had volleyball games and I’m pretty sure I ran fevers during them both. Then Wednesday morning was the PSAT. I skipped it because I felt bad and came in at noon. That afternoon during volleyball practice I ran another fever. I was so relieved that day to go home and rest, but when I got out to the car my mom told me we were going to the hospital to visit my grandma because she was doing really badly. The hospital was in Fenton. We stayed at the hospital until 7:30 then Joe and I left to go home because I had school and my last volleyball game the next day and because we had the puppy with us. We hadn’t eaten and we stopped at this Burger King because it was the closest thing and then we went back home. I ate really fast and my stomach hurt really bad, but I thought it was just because I ate too quickly and hadn’t had much else to eat during the day. I took Nyquil so I could sleep and went to bed that night at 10:30, but I woke up at midnight. I sort of leaned up in bed, well more like rolled over on my side and I thought that, “I feel like I’m gonna puke,” and as soon as I thought that I leaned off the bed and threw up all over the floor and my slippers. Then I got up and puked more. I got really hot and then really cold, I was sweating and shaking. After it was cleaned up I went back to bed and I threw up every hour on the hour until about 5:00 A.M. During the initial puking I intended to still try and go to school and play in the game. By 5:00 A.M. I couldn’t take trying to sleep anymore and moved to the couch and announced I wouldn’t go to school because I felt so horrible and therefore would not get to play in the last game of the season. I puked for the last time at 8:30 A.M. then felt quite a bit better, but just really weak. All of it dehydrated me pretty badly and right before the final puking I had gotten up to go to the bathroom and as I was coming down the hall got really dizzy and my vision kind of went out, but once I sat back down and puked I felt okay. Then at noon of that day, my dad went to let my dog inside, but she had died. It wasn’t a surprise really. I had her since I was a very young child and she was declining in health. A few days later my grandma died after being in and out of the hospital for over two months. That following weekend I became sick again. I remember feeling so worn out during that time. I wasn’t really sad about my grandma’s death in a way I was relieved because of how stressful the whole ordeal had been, but at the same time I felt guilty for feeling that way. Every time she would get better she would eventually just get worse again. The stress of it all made me wish sometimes that she would just die and I knew that it was a bad thing to hope for, but it was the truth. The hardest thing after her death wasn’t actually the death, but the feelings of my mom and aunt and seeing how sad they were.
Within junior year, I was also feeling quite angsty about college and life after highschool in general. It still seemed far away, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t. Here is a portion of a journal entry recorded a little over a week later:
I think that I’m ready to be done with highschool, but also not really because I’m kind of scared for college. I guess I worry a lot about if I’ll make friends. Joe says I will, but I’m just not so sure and still worry about it. Sometimes I worry that I’m a really bad person, but I think if I really was a bad person I wouldn’t be sitting around worrying about if I was a bad person I’d just be being a bad person. Sometimes I think (haha) that I need to quit overthinking so much. Sometimes the best things I’ve done are when I don’t think I just do, but I guess to do that you’re still thinking and also doing.
My junior year also marked the gradual waning of a friendship with someone who at the time was my best friend. She and I had been through a lot together and we had kind of been attached to the hip for a few years. Junior year changed it because we had slightly different schedules, she had more free periods than I did and consistently wanted to go off campus, which was suddenly much more convenient to do given our suburban as opposed to rural location. I remember that a lot of moments junior year confused me. Not during the first few months, but by November it had set in. In December I wrote in my Notes App, “Part of me feels like I may have depression and need medication for it.” It felt like I didn’t know who I even was sometimes. Some days I felt fine, others it felt like my world was falling apart over and over.The following are other excerpts from my Notes App:
So, to me when teachers are acting like this there’s a resounding feeling I have and it’s: “why should I even listen to you? What knowledge do you really have that makes you so great? You just went to school for extra years and this somehow makes you qualified to tell me how to run my life when you don’t even f*cking know how to run your own?” They act like they have it all together and figured out, but they don’t. They put so much pressure on students to perform and then put even more pressure on good students to perform citing the reason “well you’re good and it’s out of character for you not to be etc. blah, blah,blah.” In this thought blurb, I remember that I felt stressed out from the amount of work and activities I was doing and how it seemed like there was no room to be a little less perfect than usual. For years, I felt like I always had to be on and by junior year I just wanted a break. In January, I had quit Student Council along with two others. I was tired of planning events for ungrateful students and it was eating up a lot of my time. The response from faculty and students was crazy. We were told that we would “deeply regret dropping student council” and that it was something that could “drastically alter your life paths”. Our friends looked wide eyed and shocked, now scared that we would have no extracurricular events; it was brought up in a faculty meeting. The way the aftermath of us dropping student council was talked about was akin to the school being detonated.
On March 31, 2023 I wrote,“I feel like I am absolutely meaningless and everything I do is meaningless too.” At this point, I don’t remember in detail what caused me to have that thought, but I do remember going to the bathroom and crying while typing it into my phone.
May 8, 2023, “It feels like there’s something wrong with me. Everything at school feels off. Have I done something? I think I need help.”I kept feeling very with in myself junior year. I had trouble understanding how it seemed like everyone around me was having such a good, unaffected year, when I wasn’t. At times, I felt like because I wasn’t happy everyday and the people around me were, or at least seemed like they were, that there was something literally wrong with me. Looking back at it now, I wish I could tell myself then that there was never anything wrong with you, that you’re strong and brave, and that even though everyone seems happy there’s a lot of things in their life that aren’t because there’s a lot of unhappy things in everyone’s life.
5/16/2023 @ 9:33 PM “I just feel so twisted up inside like all my thoughts and feelings are knots and I just want time to make sense of it all. I want people to leave me alone and then I wish that they’d care more. Will I just never be happy? Why am I like this? Is there something wrong with me? Can anybody truly love me? It feels like I have two opposite ends of extremes; my head’s either racing or I can’t think of anything at all. I feel like it’s so rare that I actually feel calm anymore. I don’t care about school, but at the same time I clearly still do. I just feel so tired of it. Is it really gonna matter? Will college really be better or will I still feel trapped? I feel tired of knowing everyone in the school but at the same time do I really know them? What do I even know? Does anybody know anything? The USHP visit freaked me out so bad I’d never ever want to go to that college. What if other schools are like that? If I stay in Missouri will I regret it? Does going somewhere else really make a difference? I feel like St. Louis is already so different from what I’m used to it’s like being in a different state completely. A different world that is really only 45 minutes away.”
My final Notes entry from the 2022-23 school year was came on May 18 at 8:27 PM: “Next school year I want to focus on doing what I want and what I like and not caring about what others have to say about it.”Eventually, I would come to follow this advice, to live out this prophecy, if you will, but, it would be a long time coming until I saw better days.
I got to the summer and felt good for a while, but quickly the worry began to set in, again. I was looking forward to my senior season of volleyball. I began playing in eighth grade and I really loved it, but I dislocated my knee midway through the season, so I sat cheering from the sidelines for the second half. I didn’t get to play my freshman year because of the pandemic, not due to the fact of my school canceling the season, but because I was an at home student (online) and we were not allowed to come in to play sports. In tenth grade it felt like I got my much deserved comeback and in my junior year my skills came through from work I put in from training and playing summer league. Senior season was supposed to be good. It needed to be good because it was the last chance for it to be. But, it wasn’t. The season was really awful. We actually had won the most amount of games since the volleyball program started, I believe we were 10-4, so statistically speaking it was a good season, but I also learned in statistics class that the numbers do lie, or they at least don’t tell the full story. The team dynamics were something else. There was no trust, chemistry, kindness or mutual respect between any of us on the team. There was no openness or willingness to set aside differences and work together. There were plenty of snide remarks, backstabbing comments, and dirty looks though. To make matters worse, I had thought that I was going to get one of the captain positions, and I didn’t. I was crushed by it and I tried to move on, but it all felt so bad within the team that I just kept living there in this awful place. The tension within our practices was palpable. When I got into my car at the end of the day, it was as if suddenly my eyes cleared, my back straightened, and I could think again. Volleyball went from being this great stress reliever and something that I loved to the cause of more stress and something that I dreaded. We might have had the most winning season, but no one played their best version of volleyball.
Outside of volleyball, I felt alienated and disconnected from my classmates, from my friends. In classes, I was so worried about everything or just worried thinking about what I would say that I didn’t say anything at all. It felt like people looked at me like I had a third eye. I didn’t know what to say, or really, I didn’t know what it was they wanted to hear. It seemed like whatever I did people didn’t really like me. Everyone seemed off in their own little world, like no one wanted to be there. Looking back now, or even looking back when I first began feeling better, it seems like everyone was off in their own little world because they were. I was dealing with plenty of pain and uncertainty about senior year, and everyone else did, too, but, back then to me it felt like my classmates stood at the top of the peak while I was trapped in the valley below. I was stressed about college, but the reason I was stressed was because it seemed like everyone had a plan worked out beside me. The key words in that sentence, though, are: it seemed. I got bad advice from an administrator in the building regarding college applications, and in my opinion, their “advice”, which I did NOT listen to (thankfully), was also offensive. When I began my college applications, through the Common App, I saw that the universities I was applying to didn’t have required letters of recommendation and they were listed as optional, my question to the administrator was simply: “Should I still get recommendations?” Now, I am not a college counselor or an administrator, but here’s my two cents: even if they are optional, you should still get the letters of recommendation because they show more about you then your GPA or ACT score ever could. It’s a thing of, well, they’re not technically required, but why wouldn’t you do them? Anyways, this is pretty close to the verbatim version of what they said to me: “There’s no point in asking if they aren’t required because there are different categories of schools and those that you just listed are green light schools and they’re very easy to get into– you may even hear back from them within the day you apply. Other kids are applying to much more competitive schools with competitive scholarships, so you’re just wasting teachers’ time asking.” I left their office stunned and embarrassed. I already felt like a burden and those comments felt like even more confirmation to me. Thankfully, I didn’t listen to their awful advice. Teachers were happy to write me recs and without them, I don’t know if I would have gotten all the scholarship offers that I did.I would also like to point out, that very few universities actually require letters of recommendation. This information is something that you can easily access on the Common App website, which you would think, a “college counselor” would know that.
During this time, I also lost around twenty pounds due to pure stress. I quit eating much because I felt sick to my stomach all the time, and when I did eat my stomach ached like it could explode. I slept terribly and felt tired all the time. My joints popped when I extended my limbs. My head felt in a foggy daze. I lost my period for six months and chunks of my hair were falling out. But I was told by different women how good I looked, that I had lost so much weight, and it all made me feel worse. In maybe late October or very early November, I was standing in the kitchen ahead of leaving for school. I was wearing a pair of jeans that had fit well, but now looked much too loose. My mom told me something like “Wow, you have been working out so much that those jeans are just way too big on you. We’ll have to get a new pair.” I told her then that I didn’t think it was because I was working out and that I didn’t feel healthy even. She asked what I meant and I explained: my jeans weren’t too big because I was dedicated to working out. I didn’t lose weight because I was watching what I ate, I lost weight because I was so stressed I couldn’t bring myself to eat at all. I told her how bad it felt to hear people tell me I looked so good because I didn’t feel good. I felt bad, I felt so much worse than I ever did when I was twenty pounds heavier. I didn’t feel proud of my figure, I felt ashamed of it because I knew how I really got it.
The volleyball season ended, and I was relieved it finally did. Basketball wouldn’t begin for another few weeks and I was excited for it, I had played basketball since I was little, but part of me was anxious. I felt scared that maybe basketball would end up like volleyball— a wasted season. I’m very happy to say that it didn’t. I was co captain for the second year along with a girl I really like and consider a friend. There were a lot of younger girls on the team, new players, and older players who weren’t as confident, so I got to take on more of a leadership role. At first, the practices weren’t super fun, which scared me, but then we played in our first game. It was really intense, but for the first time in months I felt what had been missing the whole time during the season of volleyball. Passion, desire, competitiveness, focus. It all came pouring out in that initial game. I felt burning in my legs and sweat dripping off my body and fire in my lungs and it felt good. It made me feel like I was alive again. It made me feel like I was in control again. It made me want to feel that way again and again and again. It was a really close game that we lost, but to me it felt like we had won. It felt like I had started to win the battle with myself again.After months of doubting my skills and abilities, I proved to myself that there was something I could do right. With both sports that I’ve played, I have always struggled more with self doubt in basketball than in volleyball. Even in good basketball games, I’ve sat in the car on the ride home and picked myself apart, but I didn’t do it that night. That night, my brother crawled into the backseat with me, and we talked about how well I played, the skill set of the other team, what I could do to compliment my teammates and play even better.
By November and December, I was starting to slowly feel better. I still had my days where I did not feel good mentally, where I felt outside of myself— unsure. But it was getting better. I got into all three of the initial colleges I applied to, with really good scholarship offers, but I didn’t tell anyone at school at the time because I didn’t really feel like I had someone to turn to. It’s strange, but there are portions I just really don’t remember, but this is what I can recall: I remember sitting outside by myself for lunch, a boy that I’ve known since preschool coming to sit next to me. I remember he had a coffee, in the striped holiday cup, from Starbucks and I asked him what kind of coffee he was drinking. He told me a vanilla latte. He said he got it because he didn’t really know what to order. I think I made some joke like “It’s good that you admit you like sweet coffee because there’s some guys who think it’s not ‘manly’ enough to drink coffee with syrup and milk. I’ve heard people say lattes are ‘too white girl’, I guess you’re not that kinda guy?” And he laughed. I made this stupid comment and he laughed. I could make people laugh. I remember sitting in the commons in December ahead of the semester English final. Hali approached me asking if I wanted to come over to her house for her birthday during winter break. And I felt it again; I felt like I was wanted and that I belonged. I felt like I had a friend again. We went on winter break. I went over to Hali’s house. I took a few walks with my brother, got ground beef that was on sale for my mom, watched the third Bill and Ted movie. I remember all that, but I don’t remember what changed. When I came back in January, for the second semester, it was like all the life that had been drained out of me came screeching back. I felt healthy again. I felt like I could think clearly and had no trouble speaking up. I felt like I had good friendships again. I felt wanted. I felt like I was back. I felt happy again— a feeling that I don’t think I really felt on a consistent basis since sophom*ore year.
Everything seemed like it was going well, until, it very suddenly, wasn’t. I got into a fight with my old best friend from sophom*ore year. We had been really close since eighth grade where we were a part of a trio. When the third member left, we spent a lot more time one on one together, and we were essentially attached at the hip. By junior year, we started to naturally drift apart. That drifting hurt because for me she was like my everything and I was beginning to learn that, maybe, she didn’t feel that way about me anymore. I tried to desperately hold on, even though I knew it wasn’t the same anymore, we weren’t the same anymore. By senior year, we barely talked to each other. She spent her time as a member of a new trio, and, in the beginning, anyways, I wasn’t talking to much of anyone, but as I came out of my depressive episode, I was talking to everyone about everything and simultaneously talking to no one about nothing. I had held in my thoughts for so long that now, when I finally felt good, again I had to let them out. I felt like I was friends with everyone at school and I comfortably hung out with anyone.
There was a day in February where things started to turn sour. We were in English class and having a discussion on Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. If you’re unfamiliar with the novel, it’s a Vietnam War story, in part from O’Brien’s perspective. We got to the chapter where Tim considered fleeing to Canada because he didn’t want to fight in a war for a cause he didn’t believe in. I had posed a question: “Is it more courageous to risk your life serving in the war or is it more courageous to stand firm in your conviction and choose not to fight, but potentially never see your family again?” My old best friend spoke up, which I was happy about because she rarely did, and she believed that it was more courageous to fight for your country. And I asked her, “So, would you fight for your country in a war you didn’t believe in, if you knew that your fate was that you were going to die?” She clammed up. And to be fair, I don’t blame her. I think at best, it’s a difficult question and at worst it can be quite upsetting to think about. Later that day, at basketball practice a teammate told me she overheard her talking about me negatively to a teacher. I texted her and apologized as I assumed she was upset about English class, but she launched into this rant about how awful I had been for weeks. At a home basketball game, another teacher approached my family, all members were present that night because it was senior night, he told my family that I was going to get an RJM for my behavior, but didn’t cite specific incidents that warranted the punishment. My mom was clueless and I was too. I thought that maybe it had to do with the best friend situation, but it didn’t. I got told in English class to go down to the office. I walked into the room and I felt the sweat begin to form on my palms, the lump forming in my throat. I didn’t really understand why I was being dragged down there. I was agonizing over having to pour out my own personal issues in a dying friendship to my principal. I never liked getting mushy with her. I once heard her say, to a teacher, that she didn’t get why kids seemed so nervous around her or so formal; I didn’t understand how she couldn’t understand that feeling; I wondered if she felt like she was close with her highschool principal and would want to tell them personal stuff; I guessed she probably wasn’t close with them because who is? No one, unless the principal is your dad or mom or something.
I sat down on her office couch. It was the kind that you sink into, extra comfortable to make you extra comfortable so you’re more susceptible to pour out your emotions or whatever; maybe it’s just a comfortable couch. For the next half hour, or so, I got to have accusations made about me: I was too aggressive, loud, disruptive, making lude jokes and comments. I should be kicked off the basketball team, I ate during a whole class period, I kick stools and slam doors, I can be heard from the classroom over. My behavior was making people uncomfortable, I’m acting manic, it’s concerning.
Some things were just such bullsh*t. Some things were made up or the accusation wasn’t the fully story of what happened. I wasn’t slamming doors, you didn’t have to pull them close, they just shut (slammed) behind you. I did kick a stool because I was angry, but I was reprimanded and immediately admitted I shouldn’t have. I didn’t punch a girl in basketball, we were tangled, grappling. She fell to the floor, grabbing at her stomach, but I didn’t touch her. After the game, she told me I played great and I said the same to her. There was a rumor, that started as a joke, but quickly became not funny, that I was doing drugs, that I was coming to school high because there was no way I could be in such a good mood everyday.
It hurt, but what hurt most was being told that I wasn’t myself anymore–that I wasn’t acting like the “real” me or like “Ella”. The truth is, though, I just wasn’t acting like whatever expectations that they had concocted up for me over the past 17 years. I wasn’t quiet anymore. I questioned things. I was talking with everyone and they were positive interactions. I was leading our school in making acknowledgements during our morning meetings. Would a trouble making child do that? Would they go out of their way to say nice things about people? No one said anything when I was depressed for months, but suddenly when I felt happy everyone had something to say about it. How did that make any sense? Wasn’t it clear that there was something wrong with me or going on with me four months ago? I didn’t know what the answers were, but what it felt like is that I broke their ideal of me. I told my principal that I thought I was being like the real version of me and that they have seen this version before, it was just that I had been so inside myself that now it was coming out in a full, all consuming force. I was something else, now, and they didn’t like it. I was real and they thought I was fake. I was myself and they didn’t want me. What came to mind then and comes to mind now is this: “The image of me you had, who was she? An ever needy, ever shining jewel whose shine reflects on you.” It felt like they liked the idea of me, but they didn’t really like me. I was hurt. I was angry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to say how I really felt, not just some polite, polished version of how I felt, but I couldn’t do that because it would just add to the list of reasons for me being a mad woman; but I wasn’t a woman in their eyes, either, probably, what they would say is that I was an emotionally troubled girl with an overzealous attitude.
In the aftermath of my friendship problem and RJM, I just felt shocked that it all happened. It didn’t feel real. I had spoken to a classmate about how I felt. I thought that if I had been a boy, I maybe wouldn’t have gotten as severe of a consequence, and that my punishment for unruly behavior would have been equivalent to a slap on the wrist. To some extent, I still think this. I calmly was discussing this with my classmate, when a faculty member snapped at me. Their face turned red as they yelled at me from across the room. “It’s not because of sexism, it’s because you’re acting crazy and being a bad person! You’re a LIAR!” I was stunned, but I didn’t say anything. They sat back down at their desk, as if nothing happened, and I sat back down at a table, put in my earbuds and tried to work, until I was called down to the office again.
This time I was told that because I tried to set up a time to talk through my issue with my former friend, who then blew me off, I was “verging on harassment”. The administrator brought up explicit things I had texted, I will admit that I wrote some of them to cut—to purposely hurt her the way she hurt me. I admitted this and pointed out the things she said to me: “you’re a burden,” “you make everyone uncomfortable,” “you’re too much,” “everyone’s been thinking it and telling you to stop, and you just don’t.” I left the office that day, went to the bathroom, dry heaved and then cried for five minutes. It felt like the previously mentioned activities were becoming routine. The dry heaving was new, but the crying wasn’t. I unlocked the stall, stood at the sink, splashed cold water on my face, patted myself off with paper towels, rubbed my eyes– I’m smart, I know how to make it look like I haven’t been crying– and then I got my stuff and headed to third period.
The following week, my old friend and I worked out our differences. She began talking to me again, and by the end of the week I couldn’t take it anymore. I texted her an apology and she apologized, too. At this point, we had two weeks of regular classes left, we agreed we wanted to end on a good note. The night before, I stayed up, all night, writing in my journal about how I was going to miss a lot of things about highschool and the people there, but also how I was looking forward to college. It was five pages in total and everyone knew about it because I told them, and read the entry. Would a bad kid do that? Would they write about how much they were gonna miss everyone? I was prepared to peacefully get through the last bittersweet weeks before interim, spring break, and senior projects, but, like I said at the very beginning of this article, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from highschool, it’s that nothing goes how you planned it. I didn’t know it yet, but I was burning girl, and girls on fire always go out with a dramatic flare.
We had one last English essay assignment. A paper on The Things They Carried. I was asked by a friend if I could help him with it. He was stressed, lacking in motivation, and he was my friend, so I agreed. I helped him write the essay. There were portions that I wrote or said ways he could phrase the argument. As a joke, I said he could repay me with a Chipotle burrito bowl. It was a joke. I didn’t care if he did or not. A few days later he gave me $10. It was the last day of regular class. I stayed up late, the night before, making treats for our history research paper symposium. Yeah, that really seems like something a troublemaker would do– make DIY Crumbl cookies. I even went overboard: I made chocolate chip cookies, failed iced brownies that didn’t set up. I woke up early and cut up veggies with ranch and mini sandwiches on Hawaiian rolls. My mom ran to Walmart to get pink lemonade. I wanted it to be special. I wanted it to be fun for everyone whether they were a senior and it was their final day or not. While my cookies were in the oven, I wrote a pilot script episode of a Freaks and Geeks reboot.
Everything was going well that day, but after the history symposium, we both got dragged into the office. I got to sit on that couch and defend my actions, again. I made the argument that other students had completely written papers for others before and that there are plenty of students using Chat GPT to write their whole essays. I was told that I was “deflecting from [my] own problems,” called weak, and the insightful “in times of crisis your true colors show.” The punishment was that we would both get 0’s on the assignment. I came home crying. On the car ride home, I texted my brother this: “I just wanna live in peace and not be accused of being a bad person anymore bc it’s starting to feel true.”
In the week that followed, I was, wisely, told by my parents to “keep anything and everything under your hat,” and I did; I didn’t talk about the situation with anyone, I was well behaved, I wore conservative clothing because I didn’t want a dress code infringement to be blown out of proportion, another reason on my ever growing list of failures. At some point, my mom had a meeting with the principal, where more was revealed about the situation than I had known. The accusation came from the faculty member who called me a liar, who I made a plate of cookies before right after that second RJM. They alleged that I stood in front of the class and bragged about being paid to write someone else’s paper. My mom refuted, but in some ways her defense was worthless because it came down to an I said, they said, and my mom wasn’t in the building. It’s not true though. I never remember standing before the class bragging about it happening. Furthermore, if I did, or if they heard me talking about it, it is very funny to me that they turned us in when they fully knew about other students cheating and never cared to squawk. My mom argued that if I received a 0, my grade could drop to a D, which could damage the amount of scholarship money that I had already earned. Her point was simple: why jeopardize a young girl’s future off of one mistake? Over the next few days, I was in punishment purgatory, meaning I didn’t know what my punishment was. Then one day, I was told by my English teacher that I could make up the work while on my senior project. All I had to do was write a few short essays on poems and read an extra book. I did it and I ended with a B+. My scholarships stayed the same, I got into the honors college, and I was relieved that it was all over. My principal’s final words to me came in an email “not even a B can get you down!”
I went out for my senior project and I had a wonderful time. There were some things that happened that hurt like not being invited to pre-prom plans with people that I thought were my friends. From this situation, lies and rumors about me continued that were either perpetuated from classmates involved or revealed through their parents texts messages with my mom. Out of the five people who were invited, only one actually apologized to me. I’m happy that we made up because I consider her a very good friend and I didn’t want to fight. I don’t hold what they did to me against them. I don’t really care anymore. I have moved on because I’m not juvenile.
Being out of the building completely for that last quarter of school was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Here are two blog posts I made during the eight week long duration of my senior project:
“Overall, I have loved being on my senior project. I was telling my mom that it honestly doesn’t feel real that I am working there. It makes me feel so adult and sometimes I’m like “wow, this isn’t actually my job. I’m not actually 22, I’m 17, and I haven’t even graduated yet.” It’s crazy to think about and it almost just feels like I have been dreaming and that I am just sleepwalking through life, but I’m not and it’s very real, and I am really so lucky to get this opportunity. I also thought that since I am 17, I would get a lot of people, not a lot, but some, who would be like, “Oh, do you even know what you’re talking about?!” but not a single person has done that. Everyone has treated me like an actual adult with a ton of respect and kindness. And I think a lot of people thought that I was out of highschool and just working there, LOL and when I said I was still in highschool they were like “WHAT?!”
It’s also been cool just meeting new people and having a completely fresh start. I think it’s cool that at school we have all known each other so well and for so long, but at the same time, it’s nice to go somewhere, where no one has any past judgments about you and you just get a fresh start. And it feels really good to feel well liked there for just being me, too. I kind of got a feeling that a few people found me annoying, too much, and just didn’t like me for my “new personality” when really my true personality was just showing through. It definitely hurt to be kind of squashed down, told to change, and just called some pretty nasty things like a liar and to have my character called into question, when I know exactly who I am and have been for the past four years of highschool, for the past almost two decades at school, by people who know who I am as well. All I know is that I never want to make a person feel like they need to suppress who they really are to fit into some standard mold. It’s one thing to be told to be quieter and tone down some stuff (which I agree with, there were times I was really loud and disruptive) but to be called things like a liar, rude, a bad person, and weak is awful to hear when you know you aren’t those things. I know for a fact if there ever was a behavioral issue with anyone at the History Museum they would never say those things and handle it very professionally, but also with humanity, courtesy, and compassion. And that is the kind of environment I want to be in.
I guess all I can say is it feels good to feel liked, accepted, and wanted, and really when it comes down to it that’s all people really want in life, and that’s why we try to get ourselves to fit to these objective molds that someone (probably an old, rich, white dude, let’s be honest) puts on us. It’s just stupid. So, to be accepted, liked, and wanted for who you truly are and to be able to happily coexist with other true individuals who are their complete selves feels just really amazing. And all I have to say for those little rascals (not the cute little kids) who try to crush your spirit and tear you down is that they do that because they see you being yourself, and they are probably insecure of themselves, so to make themselves feel better they try to make another feel how they feel on the inside, but it doesn’t make them feel any better, it just makes them feel worse, and then they think the answer is to continue berating people. If you want to feel good about yourself, then lift someone else up (Joe had this engraved on a dog tag necklace for one of his senior gifts from our parents and I want to do the same, but with a different quote). Tearing someone down is never the answer.
I think that Maya Angelou quote is true, (if any of you don’t know Maya Angelou, I may sue someone), but it’s the one where she’s like, “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel,” is exactly true. I am not gonna forget the few people who made me feel awful about myself and tried to chain me down. It could only be one person who does this to you in your life, but you will never forget it because it will have a huge impact on you and your thought process for the rest of your life. But I am also never going to forget the many people who have lifted me up in the school community and beyond. And from both of those lessons, the good and the bad, I know that I never want to make someone feel that they need to hide or suppress their true selves. I want everyone I encounter to feel confident in showing me their true selves and giving me their honest opinions because that is what I want to give to people as well. Sorry to get all “kumbaya,” sappy, philosophical on you with this one, but it’s just been on my mind since the first week and I thought it was worth sharing.”
Towards the end of my time on my project, I wrote this:
“So, since I wrote a blog post early on about my overall thoughts and feelings about the senior project experience, I thought it may be cool to share one about how they have changed or new information since we are all in the last stages of our projects.
I think the biggest thing I have realized from being on the senior project is how ready I am to be done with highschool and I don’t mean this in a rude way of like “I’m done with this place and I am never coming back!” I am just ready for something else. I’m tired. I’m too old for this (highschool) anymore. And maybe “too old” isn’t even the right phrase, I mean I am 17, I’m graduating early, but I just don’t belong in a highschool setting anymore. I think I’ve gotten too good at the challenges highschool presents whether it’s academically, athletically, or socially. It’s not challenging enough for me anymore. In my mind I am already at that graduation ceremony– I’ve been there for months. I’m ready for something different. And all that means is that you guys, as teachers and administrators, have done your job. If I felt unprepared or like I wanted to keep doing highschool then I wouldn’t have gotten the full lesson highschool is supposed to teach or fully absorbed my preparation for the real world. You can’t stay in highschool forever in a literal sense, and I don’t want to be one of those adults who just talks about their “glory days” and has never let anything from highschool go. Your life doesn’t stop after highschool, it doesn’t stop after college, it doesn’t stop once your 30 or 40 or 50 or even older. Life goes on and each decade is another new era (like the Taylor Swift’s eras tour! I am so sorry I made this joke like this is such a dumb joke) and you have got to keep going and changing. That doesn’t mean you have to forget about the past completely, it just means there’s not a point of dwelling on the past and wishing you could go back to a different period of your life.
I also just think that often times the adults who act like highschool was the best time of their life are in a way lying. I would say overall my highschool experience has been really good and way above average in terms of my personal feelings, but also above average from all the different things I have gotten to try. I don’t think at a big school I would have gotten as good of academic classes or to play multiple sports or the chance to come out of my shell and be more outgoing. But I mean, I don’t know this for sure and sometimes I do wonder how things would have shaken out had I gone to a different highschool. One thing is for sure though, I wouldn’t be sitting in the grand hall of the Missouri History Museum writing this post, I wouldn’t be working 30 hours a week for the museum, meeting high profile humanities people, or offered a part time job for pay while I go to college. But even within my really good highschool experience I have had moments where I just feel really awful, including the beginning of senior year from like August until I started feeling better again in November. I think the people who are still stuck in their highshool mindset neglect to mention or have purposely blocked out completely the memories of how awful highschool can feel sometimes. One of my favorite things about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (“BTVS”) is that yes, Buffy has to fight all these actual demons, but at the same time she has to have this struggle with the regular metaphorical demons of highschool all while having to conceal this really insane secret (that she is the slayer) that causes a ton of inner turmoil. And yeah, I haven’t fought vampires or saved the world in highschool, but I have had to slay plenty of my own personal demons. And in a way, I think that’s what highshool or even just life is about– it’s about encountering these demons or really awful situations, and coming to terms with them, and figuring out someway to fight them off, and they may not go away completely, but there’s things you can do to not stay so attached to them.
It’s very cheesy and I feel like such a little pretentious snot writing this, but I feel like I have become a woman while on this project. Not like in a creepy or weird sense, but in that I am more of an adult now then I was weeks ago. I understand more about the adult world and how it works. I’ve learned that it’s not this mysterious and scary thing like the boogeyman. It’s sort of like highschool, except you don’t have to sit at a desk all day (well I guess depending on your job you may have to sit at a desk all day). And I am just excited to keep experience this new part of my life for the next few years during college, and then see what happens after that, which is something that I think is really beautiful and I am fully confident in myself that I am capable of taking the full plunge into adulthood because I have already gone into the shallow end, and even though it might be scary at times I am gonna be perfectly alright.
I apologize for the length of this and I will be seriously trying to limit myself in these last few posts I have to do, but I will say, this stuff does come from my own head and heart and I think that should account for something in these matters.”
I graduated and life kept rolling and rolling; I kept growing. I think at first I was still very hurt by what happened. I think I wanted some kind of movie style retribution, but I realize now that won’t happen. A few weeks ago, my brother and I were driving. “Ella, I think sometimes you think that people do things and that it’s all really thought out because you think really hard about what you do, so when something bad happens whether it’s to you or to someone else, you think ‘how could they do that?’ like it was really malicious and they meant it, but, the truth is that, people are just people. Sometimes, they aren’t thinking at all, they just do things without even thinking about how it will hurt someone.” I thought about what Joe said. He was right, again. It’s true. Sometimes people do things without thinking at all, without thinking about how it may hurt, or any consequences. Lord knows, that lots of my behavior like being very loud was done out of impulsivity, but I don’t think it should be held against me. I think for the first time in highschool I was acting impulsive, really outgoing, maybe even a little out of control. For the first time in highschool, I was acting like a real teenager.
I think the situation with myself was grossly mishandled, but as I said before there will be no revenge, no retribution, no admittance, no apology. They aren’t thinking about it because they didn’t think about it when it happened. They hurt me, they didn’t seem to like the real me, and at the end of the day, I don’t like the real them that I saw, so there’s no point in caring about whatever their opinion of me was or is. After all, people show their truest colors in times of crisis and I am not a fan of the palette.
In a twisted way, I do think that I learned a lot from the situations, I grew up a lot, but I don’t think it was right that I had to be put through it. An old teacher told me that as time goes on it will start to make more sense and I think he’s right. Even in the little amount of time that has passed, I look back at some of the situations and they’re sort of funny. Just the other day, I was flipping through my journal and I found an entry from the summer before senior year. I wrote about how I wanted to shed some of my good girl reputation by speaking my mind and wearing eyeliner. Everyone always said I was nice and quiet. It felt like what they weren’t saying was that I was like the quiet, good girl in movies and television, and I was hurt by it. I didn’t want to be mean, but I always thought those girls were boring. I liked Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Daphne who is really just Buffy who is really just Daphne. I liked Mulan. I like Lindsey Weir. I like Jade and Letha from My Heart is a Chainsaw. My favorite characters were girls who took action. Girls who stood up for what was right. Girls who weren’t meek and mousy. I didn’t like the classic “nice girl” because I wasn’t her. Buffy, Daphne, Lindsey, Mulan, Letha, and Jade were how I felt on the inside. They were who I wanted to be and I guess I got my wish. And like all those girls listed above, I was also misunderstood. As more time passes, there might be things that start to make more sense, but I think there will always be question marks in my mind, and I have made peace with that idea. I’ve learned that there are some things I just have to live with.
So, how am I moving on? How am I “living” with it? Well, I talk about the situation. I journal about it. I listen to a playlist I titled “go to hell” that features songs like “I Wish I Never Met You”, “Writer In The Dark”, and “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”. I write edgy “poetry”. I made this Substack article about it. But, I also do things that I just enjoy— hiking, playing tennis, making bracelets, reading. When I meet new people, I am my full self. Going into college, I get a chance at reinvention. I get a clean slate, if you will, and I am gonna write a new story because “There were pages turned with the bridges burned.”
My point is your life can and will be so much more than what happens during highschool. I am living proof that sometimes highschool can be a really great experience, but at the same time I am living proof that sometimes highschool can be a really painful experience. In the end, I feel like I’ve really done it all: I’ve gone on excellent adventures, been to hell and back, unmasked the ghost, slayed demons and vampires. In a way, I even feel that I’ve killed my slasher, and while the metaphorical killer won’t be coming back for a sequel, I will be because like Sidney Prescott, it’s my movie. So, grab the extra large popcorn and soda, pick a good seat, and settle in. It’s only just started.
*The poem “Forever” by Johnny Cash. I used this as my senior yearbook quote, ironically, it was also one of the poems I wrote an essay on for make-up work.
