I was in high school once

Yesterday my friend Sarah posed an interesting question:

Do you think who you were in high school defines you for the rest of your life?

My first, knee-jerk reaction was, "I sure hope not." For many people, high school was an awkward time they would just as soon forget, if not an out-and-out horror that they need years of therapy to recover from. I would certainly hope that such an experience wouldn't define you for the rest of your life.

But, maybe there is something to Sarah's theory. See, prior to the point in our conversation when she posed that question, I had discussed with her some issues of social insecurity that I have been having recently. These were the same kinds of issues I had in high school.

Now, it's impossible to determine the effect that high school has on your future personality, because a lot of the unique characteristics/strengths/insecurities/flaws you had in high school were not, in fact, caused by high school. You're going to go into adulthood with many of these same personality traits. Simply put, you're the same person in high school as you are for the rest of your life. True, we all grow and change, and some people may actually utter the words, "I'm not the same person I was in high school," but actually, technically you are, of course. There's always bound to be some part of your high school self left.

But back to me and my personal insecurities. As I see it, back in high school I was sort of a socially-accepted nerd. The popular kids knew me and would talk to me, but I was never invited to their functions outside of school. I was more the nerdy kid who was tolerable enough to be picked as a partner for a group project, or to invite along when you needed help using the library.

High school was fine for me, but, like most people, I spent most of the four years knowing that I would put many of the people and events behind me after graduation. I didn't out-and-out hate any of the people, I just knew high school wasn't real life.

So, I was as surprised as anyone when, after college when we a lot of us returned home, I began hanging out with people from high school again. Now I was going to bars and parties with these people, and ... I still wasn't invited to all their events. One occasion stands out from my mid-20s, when I was at some kind of gathering with high school people, and they said, "Hey, let's watch the slide show of the cruise!" Cruise?! What cruise?! Well, after watching the slides, I learned that the cruise was a cruise that everybody else at the party besides me (and a couple of other people) had recently set sail on. It was just like high school. You guys have your fun and don't mind me, I'll be over here waiting if you need help using the library.

[cue world's tiniest violins]

So, anyway, I sort of geographically blew off that crowd by moving to the midwest, and of course now we're all 30-something Facebook friends with kids and mortgages, and I've made my peace with the high school crowd. Now I have a new crowd, the rich and complex social world comprised of suburban moms.

In some ways, the insecurities of the high school social world are gone. Having a kid along with you is like having a couple of margaritas: it wears down your social armor and gets you to a point where you can admit that, yes, I do need other people. In high school everyone was all like yeah, whatever, maybe I can hang out with you, no big deal one way or the other, I don't really need anybody else. But you have this little person, this person who is sucking the life out of your already unstable self, and it's like, pleaseohpleaseohplease let's hang out together with our little life-suckers, I'll bring chips.

And so, armed with my little wingman, I met a lot of friends. I felt more secure about my social life than I ever had before. Except lately, I have begun to feel insecure again. A lot of this is my fault. See, the attitude among new moms is that anybody who recently gestated a child in her uterus will automatically get along with any other recent-gestater. And in some ways, it is easy for new moms to get along, because all they do is talk about eating, sleeping, and pooping. Until somebody starts in with the, "Well, So-and-So has already [insert pointless baby milestone here], has your child?" And the compare-a-thon begins.

The thing is, I am naturally very competitive. So I knew going into motherhood that it would be best for me to avoid conversations where we all compare our children to one another. I preferred a playdate approach where the moms talked about, oh, I don't know, anything else besides their children. I mean, obviously the kids will come up in conversation. They're a huge part of our lives. But can we just please avoid the whole my kid is so much more advanced than your kid because she can bat an object with closed fists conversation? (That, actually, is a paraphrase of a real conversation I had circa 2007.)

So, I sort of purposely cut off any mom who couldn't do anything but brag about her kid all day. I had a nice group of friends going, but lately it just feels like we're all starting to move on. Obviously, this is natural as our children get older. People are either having more children or getting paid employment, and we're all busier as our kids get involved with more activities. And it's less like the baby days when we were just like, "Yes, please, let's get together so I have somebody to actually talk to. Anytime, anywhere. Just call. I'd hang out with a monkey if it would give me a glass of wine." Now it's like, "Oh, I don't know. I have work. Jimmy has soccer. The baby has to take a nap. We're all so tired from school/Gymboree/storyhour that we just want to skip it and stay home."

I tend to take these blow-offs personally. I know we're all busy, and it's not all about me. I know that I, too, am tired sometimes and don't feel like doing anything. I have my own problems, and so does everybody else. And I know that friends drifting apart and coming back together is just life. But sometimes, I feel lonely and stuck. I feel afraid to reach out to people and tell them that I need them. I feel like nobody would ever want to hang out with me.

Just like in high school.

Which brings me to my final, not-all-about-me point. Thinking about the insecurities of high school students, I can't help but think of the recent suicides of homosexual teens. Yesterday was the day to wear purple to show support for gay teens, which is why I have turned the font for this paragraph purple. I absolutely cannot comprehend how awful it must be for teens struggling with their sexuality in high school. I found high school to be an awkward and insecure time as it was, and that was without having to keep a major secret about who I truly was. I'm disgusted by the fact that there are people bullying gay teens, and that these bullies learned this kind of hate and intolerance from their parents or from society at large. Truth be told, I don't get the whole anti-gay thing. Please, just get over it. I don't understand what gay people are doing to hurt the rest of us, but some people think that they are somehow a major threat to us all. And the worst part of this line of thinking is that the end result is sometimes gay teenagers hurting themselves. I feel very powerless as to how to solve this issue. I will raise my own child to understand that families come in all different forms, and that the most important element to making a family is love. But, he is just one child. I am just one person. I don't know what more I can do.