Got a hold of a documentary that I had been searching forever, about five kids going through their high school in Warsaw, Indiana. I'd bought the book that proceed the film version in a used book store that I was obsessed with in Indy back in the day, and finally finding the movie...it made me smile.
After watching it, in looking back at things since high school...I keep trying to figure out where I went wrong. IF I went wrong...and where the hell that sweet, innocent, flat-out-STUPID girl I was back then went.
Yes, depression is something that I dealt with in high school. After my parents moved us to Indy in the middle of my freshman year, I took it hard. I didn't speak to anyone the rest of my freshman year, just focused on writing and studying. I isolated like MAD. I did a lot of this sophomore year too, until meeting Stu, and then eventually Ian. I forced myself to be social the latter two years, especially during the weird rough patches of Ian and I's psuedo-relationship crap, and got even more involved with things when my homelife became as awful as it did. It was easier to be out in the world. It was easier to put on a happy face, bury everything down deep, and give myself so much stuff to do that I didn't have time to think or feel or be anything.
I thought I had it rough then. I thought that the home issues were bad. I thought that I'd break from the pressure of everything I was doing then...but in all reality, no one was putting any pressure on me except me. No one expected me to do and be everything I was, except me.
I remember applying to schools, thinking about how college would change me. College would set me free, get me away from the oppressive and painful strangle of my parents. Would allow me to be someone aside from the chubby, awkward, painfully quiet girl with a few, like-minded nerdy friends. and yes, EVERYONE thinks that going away to college is going to change them. Going to make things better. For some people it does. Some people, it blows up in their face. Me...I'd say it was a mixed bag, leaning more towards the latter.
I'm attempting to process mostly where the smart girl who could get through anything went...and why these episodes the past few years have crippled me to the point where I'm 23 and just now, FINALLY, preparing to have an associate's degree. I look around and see people from high school that are married, having babies, grown up jobs, grown up lives...and here I am, in my grandparent's house, being baby-sat because I can't live on my own, working shitty jobs, feeling lonely and depressed. How in a few months I'm running back to my mommy with my tail tucked between my legs.
Dear god, when did I become such a loser?
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