My high school experience

Throughout my high school experience, I would say I had the most troubling and the most hard time ever. The beginning started with my freshman year. I was 14-15 and I  was coming to school for the first time after covid I had gained a ton of weight compared to what I was before and was overall in the worst shape of my life and was not by my standards a good-looking person. I was self-conscious and worried about what other people thought and worried about people judging me. I kept to myself and stayed away from talking to people. I socially distanced myself from people because I didn’t want to be judged for how I looked. I focused on my school work, did what I needed to do, and kept a low profile. I kept my head down. I just sat on my phone during lunch, I didn’t eat, and when I did it wasn’t a lot. I would eat a slice of pizza and that was it or I would have a snack, I was miserable. I didn’t have many friends. I always felt alone like I was an outcast in a school filled with strangers and people I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t escape from it and I just wanted to be alone and not have to talk to anyone. It was overall a miserable time until lacrosse. Finally, I had something to do and something to take stuff out on. When I was playing lacrosse nothing else mattered. I was free from everything I burned myself with and I was losing weight, which was a goal I had made for myself. Lacrosse was my exit from myself. I didn’t have to care, I just had to focus on my game and play how I wanted.

Sophomore year I had lost almost 50 pounds throughout my sophomore year. I was still distant. I was uninterested. I wanted to be anywhere but at school. I would have rather gone home and watched shows in my room but I had my brother Gage who convinced me to play football, even though half the time I didn’t want to be there, it gave me something to look forward to, and gave me a reason to go to school and work hard to pass. There was still this feeling that I didn’t want to be there the only times I felt comfortable was in my math class me and my teacher would talk all the time during class or even outside of class, during my time in his class I would still struggle I slept through lessons I was overall an air-head never fully trying but putting in enough effort to pass. Then the unthinkable happened during lunch one day someone told me my house was on the news questioning what they were saying they showed me their phone and low and behold my house was on the news in a gulf of flames, I lost my appetite, to say the least, I wanted to know what was happening and where my mother was. I knew she was home, also my animals, my belongings, all my stuff was in that house. The rest of the day was a blur. We got to leave school and go to hang out with a friend since there was nothing to do at our house but watch the flames be fought by firefighters. The end result of the fire was that I had gotten a couple of my books that were safe in a cupboard. Everything else in my brothers and I’s room was ruined. We didn’t have clothes, a bed, or a home, our kitchen had a hole in the floor that reached the basement, luckily everyone was safe. The rest of the school year went by. I struggled in classes. I wasn’t fully there. I was living away from my family in different homes. I was confused and disoriented. How could this have happened? Why did it happen?

 My junior year was academically easy. I had lost more weight and was down to one hundred and eighty. I was no longer very self-conscious but I still felt that way, like I couldn’t shake the feeling. I was overall in a better place. I had some friends, me and my younger brother had a better relationship. We were in the process of getting a home so we could all be together again. I got my license. I was in a good spot. I was happy to a point. We eventually moved in and I thought things were going to go back to normal or as normal as we were, then the unthinkable happened my older brother went to jail this was caused by a drunken fight between my father and my older brother this caused the cops to get involved and since my brother drew blood he was being arrested. This was an “eye-opener” for my father supposedly he decided to go to rehab to “better himself for us” so again our family was split my father living in a sober living home my brother Seth living with my grandfather because he couldn’t have contact with anyone involved that night which included me and my mother since we were witnesses in the house at the time. By the end of my junior year, it was only Me my Mother, and Gage living in the house by ourselves, at this point we had almost no contact with our dad and were in the dark about his progress and Seth was only able to communicate with us through Gage since he was not their the night of the accident. The only thing at the time that was a getaway for me was my girlfriend at the time. Talking to her was the only thing that gave me comfort at this point in my life. There was my mom who I would have talked to but didn’t want to burden her with how I felt and there was my brother but he and I are different when it comes to my father and our feelings towards him.

During my senior year in high school, my life outside of my home was a thin thread ready to snap. My mother had lost her license for reasons that won’t be shared. So she had to rely on me most of the time for rides to and from work along with some other health concerns happening with my grandparents. Throughout the year during this time my father got out of rehab but wasn’t moving in with us; he had come home ringing off and overall distant towards us. This caused a lot of resentment for him from my mother and younger brother Gage but for me, I never really knew how to feel he had made a promise that he would “come back and be a better father” This was promised to me when he was walking out to be brought to sober living (he was in tears). For some reason, I wanted to believe him and take his word for it but I had never been able to count on that before. His word you had to take this with a grain of salt he never was very truthful and almost always went back on his word no matter what the situation. The thing is my life moved on with all of this confusion. I got absent-minded worrying about this and it took me from school. I wasn’t paying attention as much and had trouble focusing. I felt as alone as my freshman year. I talked to people in school and tried to put on a strong act but I was hurt. I didn’t know what was happening with my parents. My mom never left me alone about going to college and my girlfriend had broken up with me. It was like everything wanted to hurt me like everyone was against me. Then there was my younger brother, he helped me through my rough moments even though he might not have noticed it he was always there and willing to talk. This was helpful. It always made me happy that he involved me in stuff as much as he could. He would stick up for me if someone said something behind my back. He is and always will be my most loyal and trustworthy sibling. Then again something else happened we found out that my father was being unfaithful and lying about it to us for almost a year and the worst part my older brother knew and kept it a secret and his finance was spying on us behind our backs and reporting it to my father. We couldn’t do anything without our father knowing about it. I felt like I couldn’t talk freely in my home like I was being watched.  These hardships helped me to be able to write about this. It showed me that I am able to push it to the side, stepping away and putting it behind me, and focusing on my future and what I want to do next in my life. This is me moving past it and working to get to the next stage, taking the leap of faith to further myself as a person and to become more than what I was given as an example growing up. Committing to CMCC next year and getting away from the family squabble as well as starting a new job is something that will further my experience and education in the field I will work in. This all helped me to realize one grandiose thing my life is just beginning. There is going to be so much worse stuff later on in life there will be so many things that go wrong and don’t happen how I want them to. My high school experience was an example of this. Nothing is ever perfect. Life is a bumpy and windy road with so many curves you can get dizzy, in the end, it’s what you learn from these things that matter. It’s what you take from them to better yourself that makes you a better person in the future.

“graduation cap free printable coloring page” by kvrooma1 is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.