Thinking About: High School

I have been recently thinking a lot about High School. I spent some time the other day poking around on Facebook looking at people I knew from high school. After a while it occurred to me that I was just getting more and more depressed the more I did.

Turns out ... I really hated high school. There were an awful lot of people who went out of their way to make my life miserable. This was not difficult to do. I was so backward and unsure of myself that I made an easy target. That is not to say I didn't have friends or some good times, but overall I hated it. I really just didn't fit in anywhere, and I did not have the social skills to make any connections.

My wife had a pretty miserable high school experience, the difference was she had very involved parents and a church youth group that kept her anchored and supported here. I went through that same time with no support to speak of, and no real guidance, no one to provide perspective Consequently I made multiple poor choices that went on to effect the rest of my life.

Now several of you are reading this and saying: "Dude that was twenty years ago, get over it already!!!! High School sucks for everyone." ... and you would be correct. I guess everyone has to come to a place where than can exorcise those demons and move on.

I think what troubles me the most now is that I seem to be surrounded by people who have strong social networks/groups of friends that all developed as far back as high school and before. I don't have that. These friends all share some sort of common/shared sense of personal history. I feel like I have sort of stumbled along through life on my own.

The reality is that I have moved on. I have a good life. I have a wonderful wife and incredible, beautiful children. It's just that every now and then I look back and wish things would have been different. I supposed we all do that from time to time.