Middle School Realizations

I remember when I really started to notice that I was different from my friends and classmate. Every child has this experience, this awakening. We're all different for many reasons; we all come across this realization at different ages. Now, I'm not talking about "she has blonde hair but I have red," realizations. No, that's something you learn early on. I'm talking about more in depth realizations. The moment in life when we start to learn about ourselves, or taking a more cliché-route 'find ourselves.'

Finding oneself is a lifelong adventure. It doesn't just happen one day and I'm not trying to say that for me it did. In all honesty I just realized recently what I've known for the majority of my life. I've just come to accept it more; I've come to realize that it's not just a phase, that this is who I am. This would, to me, go back to the point that finding yourself doesn't just happen. It's taken me years of struggle to come to this point in my life and I still have a long ways to go.

But back to the time in my life that I noticed things about myself. I was around the age 12-14. Middle school to be exact. And no, this isn't a story about puberty. This is a story about maturity. I have always been a serious person. Everything had to be real, imagination didn't exist that much in my mind. I didn't see Toy Story until the third movie came out because, and I quote my younger self, "toys don't talk." But you see, growing up, I didn't really see this as being weird or out of the ordinary. Now my friends, they thought I was a freak. To me though, the joke was on them. They were gullible and believed in crazy things. While, in my mind, I was sensible and knew the truth. Nothing was weird or different to me though.

Then middle school hit. Oh those dreaded three years. No one actually has a good time in middle school, and if they say they did, then their lying. My first year wasn't so bad. Second year was worse. And third year was terrible. It's not that I didn't have friends, I did. But, just like everyone else’s middle school nightmares, friends came and went as fast as seasons. We'd fight, make up, fight, and make up. Looking back it gives me a slight headache. Needless to say, I'm not friends with any of them anymore--mainly due to the majority of them starting to drink and do drugs.

It was 8th grade when I really started to learn things about myself. My school had an 'eighth grade field trip.' As a group we got to plan a weekend trip, just for us eighth-graders. Well, my two older brothers attended the school prior to me so I knew the process. I'd been to many meetings and had come to realize when to work only with each other, and when it was necessary to bring in the adults. It's important to note that I wasn't friends with anyone in the eighth grade class. Going on this trip meant nothing to me except for the fact that it's what you did.

The school year started and we got to planning. The only problem was that, we never really got to a plan. Winter break came and went and by February, as a group, we still didn't know where we were going, what we wanted to do, or how we were going to get the funds. I kept trying to include the parents, and the rest of my peers would say that it wasn't necessary. Finally, a majority vote was taken on a camping trip miles up a mountain. I'd always wanted to go to that lake, the only thing is, and I never wanted to go with them.

As stated, these people weren't my friends. And I didn't trust them with one bit of my life. I was the only person who voted against being miles away from any civilization with them. Therefore, that's where we were going. It was March about now and, finally having a location, they finally started on with fundraising. By now I was being ignored. Anything I said or did was brushed aside as useless. So, like any young teenager, I took myself out of the trip. I told them all my reasons why, with our teacher there, and just left the group meetings. They didn't even try to stop me.

A few things happened by the end of the school year. One of the girls, who I had known since the second grade (and were good friends with in elementary school,) came up and asked me "are you sure you don't want to go on the trip? We're planning the tents right now, and if you say yes later, than you might be put in a bad tent." I never did ask what 'bad tent' meant. I'm assuming it means the tent with the adults. I just laughed and didn't reply to her.

My sworn enemy since kindergarten forced himself to sign my yearbook with something nice. He put 'I'll see you at the soccer games.' I laughed at that, knowing he would never acknowledge me at the games. The girls who I had known and been friends with throughout elementary school wrote about our journey through school together and how much they'd miss me. Again, I called BS on their notes, they didn't care for me at all, and they just didn't have the guts to write nothing at all.

My teacher, who had known me since I was a toddler, wrote something that a 14 year old girl never wants to hear. Even now at 20 I cringe at his statement. "Someday, they'll catch up to the level of maturity you have." Well, someday has yet to come. But the whole experience did make me realize that he was somewhat right. The whole trip fiasco, the understanding that these people could pretend as much as they like but they'd never be my friends, the fake yearbook signings--I just wasn't at that level. I would rather leave a page blank, than even say 'have a nice summer.' Because at least then I'd be honest. And I would always include adults when it became necessary, especially with something as big as trip-planning.

But this is not something a girl of 14, only a simple three months before her first day of high school, wanted to realize. That summer was one full of realization, acceptance, and growing up on my part. My friends still goofed around, they still partied and 'hated their parents.' But I just didn't. I realized that I had been doing stuff out of guilt and wanting to fit in. So I stopped. When they wanted to have a firework war on the Fourth of July, I simply went inside and played scrabble with the adults. When they started pushing each other into the water at the lake, I would sit on the hillside and watch from afar, reading a book.

By the end of the summer I didn't have many friends. By the end of my first year of high school I had even fewer. By the time I graduated high school I only had three people that I truly called my friends. But those three have been with me since elementary school, and have stuck through my insane seriousness all the time. And it's all because I realized my teacher was right. I was mature. My thoughts weren't bad, they just weren't an average teenagers thought. That's not bad. It's just different.

Now that I'm twenty, a college-grad, and still trying to find my place in the world, I realized that I wouldn't change a thing. People that I've met at college, and I tell them about things like this, they give me the same look that my classmates did six years ago. That 'are you fucking crazy' look. Which yes, I probably am. And for my age, I definitely am. I've been told over and over again that I was supposed to rebel, I was supposed to hate my parents, party, drink, experiment, date, go wild. I didn't do any of that. They still think that I'm a loner, that I have no friends.

The thing is though, that I'm not a loner because I've never been lonely. I've just been alone. And I would rather be alone, than be surrounded by immature people I'm supposed to call 'friends.'