Thoughts & Things

High School Sucked (And That's Okay)

I hear a lot of people tell high school students to cherish their years spent in high school, as it among the best time of one's life. Those people can, quite frankly, bite me. High school sucked. It sucked for me. It sucks for my little brother right now. It sucks for a lot of people. If it didn't suck for you, that's great, but telling people to cherish a time that might be pretty awful for them is pretty cold.

When I was in high school, I developed seasonal affective disorder. This means that every winter (aka about four fifths of the Canadian school year), I would enter a severe depression. There were days I was too depressed to get out of be. If I managed to force myself to go anyway, I was too depressed to work effectively, and I was too depressed to be pleasant to teachers or other students. Everyone thought this was simply me being an angry trouble maker, and I didn't actually receive medication for these problems until I was well out of high school.

When I was in high school, we also happened to move around. A lot. The only school I was at long enough to attend for an entire school year, was the school I went to in the ninth grade, which I attended with classmates I grew up with. After that, I moved repeatedly throughout each school year. I had very few friends, I didn't usually know my neighbourhoods that well, and just when I was starting to adjust, we would move again.

I have many friends and family members who had a terrible time throughout high school. Family problems, mental health problems, physical health problems, friend problems, bullies, struggling with classwork, and many other issues plagues so many of us. But there still manages to always be that guy. The one who tells you it's the best time of your life, and you should cherish it.

For anyone who might have hated high school like I did, that's okay. For anyone who is in high school right now, and feels like it sucks, that's okay too--just know that you don't have to be happy when the circumstances don't dictate it, and that it isn't necessarily going to be the best time of your life. For many people, myself included, life gets so much better after high school. There's great stuff to look forward to.

(I have committed to blogging daily with Give It 100. This is Day Ninety-Eight. Eight days of leave taken total.)