Escaping high school

High school was not a time in my life that I would like to forget, but it's definitely not a time that I would relive for any amount of money. I was a generally mean person. Not on the outside, but on the inside and certainly around my friends. I gossiped like it was going out of style and I would make fun of someone in a heartbeat. And I wasn't even in the "popular" crowd. High school was brutal, both to me and because of me. Nominally, I was a Christian, but I did not act like one. Among my closest friends we would backstab one another. It was a shock for me to make friends in college and not wonder if they were talking about me when I wasn't around.

All of this to say, I have had too many high school-like experiences lately for comfort. It all began a couple of weeks ago when I walked back into a classroom after a break duuring class and all of the sudden the conversation among my classmates came to a screeching halt. Their faces seemed to say, "No, we weren't talking about you...." Sure. All of the sudden I felt exactly like I did six or seven years ago. Like people I had been trying to get to know for a long time were just patronizing me with their friendship and their smiles. My heart really sank in a way that it hadn't in so long. And I know that it's my fault. And I'm sorry.

I've spent the last six years escaping high school probably the same way I would want to escape a burning building. The person that I was then, I wish to be no longer. I don't want to be the patronized one, the one everyone hides from. I don't want to be a backbiting gossiper who fuels her self-worth with the chastisment of others.

I'm so sorry.

"Wretched man that I am! Who will resuce me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
-Romans 7:24-25a