High School Is a Chapter, Not Your Whole Damn Story

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while, and I’m probably not going to win any friends with it. Some people may not like what I have to say.

That’s okay.

Because this is my truth, based on what I lived through and what I’ve watched happen over almost 40 years since - high school. And if one kid who is struggling right now happens to read this someday, I hope they hear me.

Junior high and high school are not your life.

I know it feels like they are when you’re living them. But I promise you, they are such a tiny chapter of a much bigger story.

I grew up in The Woodlands, right outside of Houston. Back then, it wasn’t River Oaks, but it was definitely an affluent little community. There were families with serious money. I went to school with kids whose parents were involved in creating companies like Compaq. There were huge houses, expensive clothes, nice cars and kids who seemed to have everything.

That was not me.

I lived in a little one-story, three-bedroom house with my grandmother. My parents had some money, but they were not the kind of parents who were going to spend thousands of dollars making sure I had every fashionable thing for school.

And honestly, clothes were the least of my problems.

From about fifth grade through ninth grade, I was a chubby little kid with really short hair. I had no boobs. I wasn’t one of the pretty girls. And kids made sure I knew it.

Y’all, I got made fun of a lot.

I could probably still make a list of the jokes boys made about me. Some of them weren’t teasing. They were cruel.

School was also hard for me academically. Back then, nobody was talking about dyslexia, ADHD and learning differences the way we do today. I struggled, and I was put into remedial and lower-level classes.

So think about it.

I was chubby. I had short hair. I didn’t have the expensive clothes. I struggled in school. I wasn’t part of the popular crowd.

There was plenty of ammunition if somebody wanted to make me feel bad about myself.

And they did.

The crazy part is that I absolutely idolized some of those same kids.

I wanted to be invited to their parties. I wanted to hang out with them. I wanted to be one of the girls everybody knew. I looked at certain kids and thought, God, I wish I could be you.

I thought they had everything figured out.

Then somewhere around ninth grade, something happened.

I blossomed.

I lost the weight. My hair grew out. I started figuring out clothes and makeup and how I wanted to look. I still didn’t have boobs, but hell, we can’t have everything. 😂

And suddenly some of those same boys who had been so damn mean to me started looking at me differently.

Except now I didn’t want them.

I remember thinking, Oh, NOW you want to talk to me? Now that I’m skinny and you think I’m pretty? No thank you.

Looking back, though, those years gave me something.

They gave me incredibly thick skin.

And I probably needed it because my life outside of school wasn’t exactly Leave It to Beaver either.

My parents divorced when I was young. My mom was with somebody else. I lived with my grandmother. There were a lot of complicated things happening around me.

Let’s just call my childhood special and leave it there.

By high school, I looked different and felt different, but I still never really found my place at McCullough.

You know how high school works.

You have the jocks. The cheerleaders. The preppy kids. The stoners. The rich kids. Every little group has its place.

I never really had one.

Most of those kids had known each other forever, and I didn’t start school there until fifth grade. Then I spent the next several years being Chubby Pumpkin, so by the time I finally started feeling good about myself, I still felt like an outsider.

Eventually, I met a boy who went to Oak Ridge, right across the highway, and I switched schools.

And it changed everything for me.

Oak Ridge felt completely different. McCullough seemed more pretentious to me—more money, more status, more emphasis on who was who.

At Oak Ridge, I was the new girl.

And by then I was older, skinny, dressing cute and feeling myself a little bit.

Yes, I’m saying I was cute.

I was cute. 😂

But more importantly, I felt comfortable there.

Of course there were still different groups, but everybody seemed to mix more. Everybody hung out on the weekends. It was just fun.

Unfortunately, by then the damage had already been done in another way.

I hated school.

I barely went. I was always getting in trouble for missing too many days, and my poor grandmother was constantly having to deal with whatever paperwork or meeting was required to keep me out of trouble.

Then eventually you Finish.

And something fascinating happens.

Everybody scatters.

Some people go to college. Some don’t.

Some stay in their hometown forever and love it. Some leave and never come back.

Some marry their high school sweetheart. Some marry somebody they meet in college. Some get divorced. Some build businesses. Some have children. Some completely reinvent themselves.

1988 was the end of High School for me!!🎉

For years, you really didn’t know what happened to everybody unless you stayed close to them.

Then Facebook showed up.

Suddenly, all these people you hadn’t seen in 20 years were right there.

Of course we all added each other because we wanted to know:

What happened to everybody?

And THAT is when I learned one of the biggest lessons of my life.

The hierarchy you thought mattered so much in high school?

It disappears.

The boy everybody thought was gorgeous isn’t necessarily the gorgeous guy anymore.

The girl everybody wanted to be isn’t necessarily living the life everybody imagined she would.

The kid nobody noticed may be wildly successful.

The awkward kid may have grown into the most confident person in the room.

The kid who struggled academically may build a life nobody expected.

And yes, some of the boys who were absolutely vicious to me back then grew up to be very ordinary middle-aged men.

Bald heads. Bellies. Regular jobs. Regular lives.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being bald, having a belly or living an ordinary life.

That’s actually the point.

They weren’t gods.

They were kids.

I just didn’t know it yet.

And some of the stories I’ve watched unfold have been genuinely heartbreaking.

I’ve watched people struggle with addiction and alcoholism. I’ve watched people go to jail. I’ve watched people completely lose their way.

I’ve watched people who seemed to have everything going for them struggle terribly as adults.

I’ve even watched people we grew up with die by suicide.

And THAT is the part I really want younger people to understand.

Sometimes I wonder if being put on a pedestal so young can become its own kind of burden.

Imagine being 16 years old and everybody telling you you’re the prettiest girl, the best athlete, the most popular boy, the girl everybody wants to be.

Then you leave high school.

And the world doesn’t care.

College has another beautiful girl.

Another star athlete.

Another rich kid.

Another smart kid.

Another funny kid.

Another popular person.

Then you enter the real world and there are millions of them.

Suddenly, the identity you built your entire self-worth around doesn’t make you special anymore.

And some people adjust beautifully.

Some don’t.

So if you are a young person reading this and you’re sitting at home tonight wishing you were prettier, thinner, richer, smarter, more popular or invited to that party everybody is posting about, please hear this from somebody old enough to be your grandmother:

Do not measure the value of your life by junior high or high school.

Please don’t.

The people you think have everything right now don’t have everything.

The kids making fun of you don’t know who they’re going to become yet.

And neither do you.

That’s the beautiful part.

You have absolutely no idea who you’re going to be at 25.

Or 35.

Or 45.

Or 55.

Neither did I.

That chubby little girl with short hair sitting in remedial classes thought the popular kids had won some lottery she wasn’t invited to.

She had no idea what was ahead of her.

And here’s something else I’ve learned:

There really aren’t any winners and losers in high school.

We just think there are because we’re kids.

Life is long.

Everybody gets knocked down eventually. Everybody loses something. Everybody gets their heart broken. Everybody gets older. Everybody has failures nobody sees on Facebook.

And everybody gets opportunities to become somebody completely different from who they were at 16.

I’ve watched this with my own children and their friends, too.

My kids did not have some perfect, easy little childhood. Their lives could be fucking crazy at times.

But they’re adults now, building their own lives.

And when I look at their generation, I see the exact same thing I saw with mine.

The kid who looked like they had everything figured out didn’t necessarily have anything figured out.

And the kid everybody worried about sometimes turned out just fine.

So to the kid eating lunch alone:

Keep going.

To the girl who hates looking in the mirror:

Keep going.

To the boy getting picked on:

Keep going.

To the kid in the lower-level class who thinks everybody else is smarter:

Keep going.

To the kid who didn’t get invited:

Keep going.

To the kid scrolling through Instagram wondering why everybody else’s life looks better:

Please keep going.

Your world is so much bigger than the hallway you’re walking through right now.

You haven’t met most of the people who are going to love you yet.

You haven’t been to most of the places you’re going to go.

You haven’t discovered half the things you’re going to be good at.

You haven’t even met the adult version of yourself.

And one day you may look back at the people you once desperately wanted to be like and realize something that would have shocked your 14-year-old self:

You never needed to be them.

You just needed enough time to become you.

High school is a chapter.

Don’t mistake it for your whole damn story.