Everybody Lies about - High School....the best days of your life.

I remember hearing this over and over and over through my High School years. Things like "enjoy these years, they are the best of your life."
I remember one day leaving bio class to go to the washroom and stopping at a water fountain for a drink. Standing there looking down the long scuzzy hallway of lockers that led me back to my painfully boring class thinking "really?! this is as good as it gets?". Not in a depressing way...but in a way that was more daunting then anything else.

 Let's recap.

Classes that were elected on your behalf - and generally weren't that interesting.

Pressure, pressure, pressure! Pressure to do the right thing, say the right thing, wear the right thing.

General akwardness of high schoolers - body odor, cliques, hormones.

Dating in high school = breakups in high school. This is the type of heartbreak only a hormone raging high schooler can have. One that makes you really truly feel that your world has fallen apart and never ever  will you get over that boy/girl that you definitely were going to marry.

The intensity of feelings in high school - love and hate.

High school hormones in general. They're all over the map.

Heavy backpacks. Seriously...I swear I have back issues today!

Bullying. It was as real then as it was now. And it comes in the most unlikely of places, at least it did for me.

And to quote Brittany Spears...you're "not a girl, not yet a woman" (so glad I could quote her). High school seems to be this "in between" stage where you think you know who you are. You think you are old enough and mature enough. But really, you aren't even age of majority yet. You have so little knowledge of the world outside of your school, your home, your peers. You have little concept of risk vs. reward and yet you feel that you should be given all the freedom of an adult.

...Just to name a few.

If I'm going to get more personal I would dare to say that my High School years were some of the worst in my life. I felt very uncomfortable with who I was and was going through a very...ahem...akward stage. Getting on the bus to drive 40 minutes into the sticks for 7 hours of classes, pressure and peers and then 40 minutes back. Then either going immediately to my part time job or burying my nose in those heavy books or math assignments...that was not the most luxurious of ways to be spending my time.

And the people. Oh the people. I had some mean girls in high school - I felt belittled and bullied. I felt heartbroken and lonely. And I felt like what they said to me (or behind my back) truly defined who I was. It took me a long time out of High School to rise above that and their ignorance and learn to love me for me. A long time to grow in who I was and learn who I wanted to become.

And I look at my life now.  It's beautiful. I like myself (and most days I love myself). I have an amazing husband of 8 years! A truly supportive family. Wonderful and fun friends who are encouraging and loving to be around. A good career that I feel achieved and thriving in. And a beautiful, amazing, healthy boy who is the pride and job of my life. I am far removed from the "best days of my life" and I confidently feel as though the best days of my life are just now getting started.





Disclaimer: I realize that it took me an awfully long time to write this post . When I first said what my first lie was going to be my parents were nervous that I would be too negative. They saw my High School years first hand. So I wanted to treat lightly. So I moved away from elaborating too personally about my High School years and tried to generalize a bit more.