A trip to my old high school

[Unmotivated]

I graduated from high school six years ago. I've been working on my art degree in college since then. To this day I've never had a girlfriend.

 

I'm home visiting my parents. They are both working today. I have nothing to do, so I go for a drive. I eat some lunch at Subway. Yum. I start driving aimlessly around town and, on a whim, decide to go swing by the high school.

 

Class is in session. I ignore the sign that says, "Visitors please sign in at main office." These are the halls I used to walk, back when I was an overweight geek with zero social skills and even less fashion sense. I stroll through the building. Kids see me and look away. I'm different now. I'm skinny, with some neatly trimmed facial hair and a shaved head. Today I'm wearing a snazzy cap and a nice black jacket. Fleetingly, I wonder if somebody is going to think that I'm some lunatic that is here to go crazy and shoot everybody.

 

I didn't hate high school. I had a great group of friends, and many of those friendships are still strong today. As school lets out for the day, the halls are flooded with people. I see muscular guys in tank tops; i see skinny, geeky kids with eyes fixed to the ground; I see a guy and a girl intertwined in an embrace. From my 24-year-old vantage point, this world is now foreign to me. Something in my gut tells me that I missed some profound point when I was here. I blundered my way through, oblivious to the real lessons I was supposed to learn.

 

Who am I? I've been pretty successful recently in being more social and in becoming a good artist. When next semester starts I get to spend more time with a girl that I just started dating. Things are good.

 

Yet, I don't feel good. I feel like I'm missing some fundamental and essential part inside me. I can dress myself up, put on a show, be assertive and social and convey the right kind of body language. But it all seems like a big act, a masquerade. All I've done in the last few years is build a nice-looking shell around an empty person.

 

Silently, I move through the crowded hall, making my exit. People are looking at me. Maybe they think I've got it all together; maybe the guys envy me; maybe the girls think I'm attractive. It all seems so absurd, because they're the real ones. I'm just a phony. I wish I could go back and relive that part of my life.

 

The things I would do differently.

 

The person I could have been...

[jmantra]

Hi,

 

I know how you feel, I used to hate high school with a fiery passion, so much so that I ended up being homeschooled the second half of my senior year and graduated with a 1.3 GPA, fast forward to today, I now have an associates degree in Information Technology, I now work as a systems technician for an online retailer and am on my way to being promoted to a web developer...

 

but back to the point..

 

I did an IT internship at a school district where the IT office happened to be located at the high school. Sometimes when I would walk through the hallways I felt just as insecure as I did when I was actually still in HS. A lot of people gave me hard time because I was a rebellious weirdo with no social skills and still am to an extent. I felt so inferior to some of the kids around me when I worked there, I dreaded being in the hallways when the bell rang because certain memories would just come flooding back.

 

A lot of staff at my former HS thought I wouldn;t go far because of my poor interpersonal/organizational and low grades, but low and behold 5 years later I have a really great career, go figure.

 

I guess the only thing I can tell is focus on the fact that you;ve lost weight, your social skills have improved and you're a great artist. Don;t dwell too much on the past.