High school is tough enough as it is, but the problems of misconceptions and social expectations add to the difficulty.
In today’s society, we’re so used to having to fit into certain expectations that it’s hard to experience life on your own accord. You used to be able to go on multiple dates with different people without anyone batting an eye because at the time it was normalized. It was normal to try to get to know more than one person, to experience different conversations and relationships with people instead of having to pick one person for the rest of your life.
Now if you try to experience that you get judged and picked on because “that’s not the norm.”
While in theory it seems cute to find that one person you can spend the rest of your life with, the one you’ll date until marriage, how do you expect to find something (love) that you’ve never experienced? I think some people forget that we’re all just kids, not only are we not fully matured, we’re still growing up. There’s things we won’t understand until we experience them.
Being in high school I have had experiences like these. For the most part, I have always tried to fit in with my peers because I did not want to be the odd one out; I wanted to blend in and relate to them. A lot of people would talk about how they had found “their person” and how they wanted to date until marriage. In wanting to be like them, I wanted that for myself, too.
I tried to talk to guys and find that person that everyone would talk about, but unlike some people I had bad experiences. Once, I started talking to this guy but I found him to be immature. I knew that this wasn’t someone I saw myself with in the future, so we stopped talking. A few weeks later, I started talking to someone else. I didn’t see a problem with what I was doing, so I thought nothing of it at the time. This guy and I didn’t work out, so we stopped talking.
I had moved on from those boys, but apparently they hadn’t. I was being sent screenshots, and being told rude things as I would walk around campus with my friends. Those boys and their friends would say how I was trying to be messy by talking to both of them because they were friends – which was stupid to me since I had been told otherwise.
After this I felt that people didn’t know or understand the real me, they were being led by misconceptions of me. This went on for a couple of months, but the last two weeks of my freshman year were the worst. I ended up spending those last two weeks in my counselor’s office because it was so intolerable that I couldn’t even be in class with them.
Over the summer I found comfort in my friends because they helped me find who I am again. I learned to put myself first because it doesn’t matter what people say or think about you, you’re the only one who knows your real self and if people can’t accept and appreciate you they shouldn’t be relevant.
I don’t know if those boys have stopped talking about me, but I do know that it doesn’t bother me anymore because I’ve learned to not care about others’ opinions. The only person whose opinion about me I care about is myself.
I believe my experience has made me better understand misconceptions and how we perceive people based on what we have heard from those around us. At the end of the day, we’re all just teenagers trying to get by, but I don’t think we realize how much of an impact we can make with our words.