Day 37: What A Waste

 There's a popular meme going around saying that 'Nobody has embarrassed me more than myself when I posted statuses on my Facebook from 2009 - 2012.' I would like to counter that with, 'There is nobody that I recognize less than myself in my matric school magazine.'

Cringe.

That's literally all I can say.

This weekend I had lunch with a school friend who has been doing a deep clean and came up with the dirt from high school. I haven't read my school magazine since I left school. Boy oh boy was it triggering.

And again, God's timing is perfect. I have really been battling to process the behaviour of some of my matrics in their final days at school. Impulsive, selfish, entitled, irresponsible. And then this weekend I was reintroduced to Emily, circa 2001, and it has brought up so much because my frontal lobe was also short circuiting all over the place. And I was miserable. 

My matric year was kak. I was freshly diagnosed with panic disorder, was taking hectic meds and was struggling with what I now realise (in my 40s) was probably some spicy neuro vibes. I think that this last realisation has hit the hardest because it's something I'm still processing as an adult. Looking back on my time in high school I have to face the very hard reality that I was very judgmental and restrictive. Most of which had been spurred by my need to manage my anxiety and the environment around me. When the part of your brain that controls rational thoughts doesn't work one looks to controlling the world around you to self regulate. And if that fails you you withdraw. Which is what I did in matric.

My school magazine was a reflection of everything I should or could have achieved, but didn't. It is a reminder of how I feel my school failed to support me psychologically, which is 90% of why I became a teacher. I don't want anyone to ever feel like I did at high school. Anxious, misunderstood, and neglected. And yet my mask as a popular, self-confident, bolshy school girl rarely slipped. And underneath it all I was all over the place. 

I think what sums up best who I was then, as opposed to who I am now, is that I really was a very lazy academic who relied on her inherent gift of the gab to see me through high school. I was also a complete snob who thought that anyone who went to Carter High School and who wore jeans from Mr Price was an absolute loser.

I would like to say that my frontal lobe did some serious growth and by the time I was 25 I had earned myself four university degrees and was in love with a boy from Carter High School. And it didn't matter what jeans he wore. 

The other thing about my school magazine is that a lot of the girls who went up to get awards at our final prize giving have not exactly shot the lights out after school. In fact I don't think anyone from my grade who currently has the name 'Doctor' at the beginning of their name won any major awards at school. And some of the people who did win big awards have really not had an easy road post high school. And some have, disappointingly, not used their vast intellects to do anything really life changing. Which makes me sad. Which makes me wonder if, perhaps, all of us were were just surviving in the horrific morass of neurological immaturity. And some of us were fortunate enough in our twenties to hit the right track that ultimately led to happy adult lives. And some of us didn't. 

When my Dad sees the SA Springbok Ladies Rugby team he will often remark, 'what a waste' - referring to my sister and the fact that she should have played international rugby because she had all the makings of a prime athlete at school... and no one has ever successfully tackled her. Its a family joke. But also slightly true because she really could have shot the lights out. 

I think I look at the pictures of myself in that magazine and part of me says, 'what a waste'. But also maybe that was exactly where I needed to be, and how I needed to feel about life, about flawed pastoral care systems, about loneliness, about being a bit weird, about educational systems that teach the student - not the human. 

At the end of the day adolescence is just shit. For almost everyone. But if my adolescence prepared me for the life I get to live now then  I will never, ever be able to say 'what a waste.'