Every so often I go into an obsessive phase where I idolize high school. I was hesitant to use the world "idolize" at first, because it just shows how wrong this obsession is. (KEY WORD: Idol.)
I went through a phase last summer that was pretty intense and just recently started to obsess over high school things again: wanting to know how people are doing, if I'm cool enough, if I'm on top of things, if I'm caught up in life. All that silliness. I told my counselor it's obviously a coping mechanism that I've digressed back to my high-school-obsessed phase, but I'm not yet sure what it is I'm avoiding.
Regardless, when this phase comes around I remember how much potential I had in high school. I remember how many people I managed to get along with from pretty much every crowd at school. I remember the highs I felt and my obsessiveness with boys and popularity and making other girls jealous. I especially remember that for TWO YEARS of my life I never went to the doctor with a high depression or anxiety diagnosis.
Those are the things I remember. I've sort of got my blinders on, but it's sort of true that I really was that happy in high school. I felt empowered. Somehow I managed to do something that I have never been able to do without a struggle in other periods of my life --> I got up early looking forward to the morning ahead of me.
This is how I remember high school, and I crave to go to my high school reunion just less than half a decade from now still that girl that other girls envy, that guys think is cool, etc. etc. So on top of life and in everyone's good graces with lots of hugs and "OMG, how are you?!"s
I let myself go into this high -- this obsessive research and reaching-reaching-reaching for those affirmations -- because for the most part it feels good. It occupies my brain and keeps me from feeling that nothingness, sadness, aloneness...
~*~
But then I remember something, and this memory remarkably enough cheers me up. I remember that after I graduated high school rumors went around in the class after me. I remember learning about these rumors from a friend one day from my entirely separate world at college and laughing, because what else can you do? Laughing because people were dumb enough to still think I was in high school and to make gossip about me. Laughing that they thought they were so smart. Laughing that I was free and unaffected. Laughing that they didn't seem to know this. That I had gotten out too soon.
And then I realize... hah. Maybe this world I fantasize about really isn't that worth fighting to keep tabs on and impress. (I've known this all along, but the emotional acceptance of this freedom feels so good.)
Maybe I've forgotten what I got away from and the reason for some of the choices I made. I forgot why I defriended so many high schoolers. I forgot how shockingly upsetting some of the jokes and views that these people carry/carried are or were. Jokes about condoms? So over that. Fighting for the right to... kill? Oh right. That's why I drew the line when it came to choosing certain friend groups in high school! That's why I defriended certain people. Not that it was some valiant move on my part, but I realized that I had found something even better.
So, now that I've realized what a laugh so much of this stuff is and how forgetful and silly I sometimes can be... hopefully this will help me to let go of this silly idolization, because I see how much more fulfilling the life I live is now.
Because life for Jesus is real life, and living life to impress these high school folks is fleeting to say the least. Not only is it fleeting, but it's silly to think I would be better staying in that world when I remember how rumors came after my graduation, or when I realize that things went beyond partying and immodesty to jokes about abortion or contraception or unmentionables (and they still do with some people), when I realize that people who looked so put together in high school are really just trying to find themselves now.
BREATH. Thank GOD I have a LIFE TO LIVE AFTER HIGH SCHOOL! A life with purpose. A life focused on Him. A life for more than the temporal. A calling that God has specially given me with my specific talents and struggles and strengths, experiences, insights... A calling yet to unfold.
A life for prayer and Jesus... looking forward to someday entering into THE LIFE OF THE TRINITY.
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