Just So You Know, Life Does Get Better After High School

One minute, you are 11-years-old and crying in the school bathroom because the asshole in your math class told you he was going to have to bleach his shirt because you touched him. Next thing you know, you are 20 and laying in his bed, tracing his tattoos with your fingertips. The popular girl who always giggled when you walked past her in the hallways of your high school will send you endless friend requests on Facebook after graduation, regardless of how many times you delete them. Your class prom king will confess to having a crush on you, despite having never said a word to you in school.

Gravity shifts and tables turn. The bullies become admirers, but time never really grants you the ability to forget the rude things they said and did to you growing up. People who snickered at your presence will end up being the ones who feel your absence the strongest. Life will present you with strange opportunities to be the bigger person and forgive people for acts of cruelty they don’t even remember committing. The only way to be the bigger person is to allow yourself to grow. Use their bullshit as the fertilizer that helps you thrive and blossom in a garden of cement. The sun will find you.

No matter how rough the situation may be, it does get better. After high school, everything changes. Masks fall off and the status quo shatters the second you cross that threshold out of that building for the last time.

In high school, everything feels like the end of the world. But high school isn’t the world. It’s just a bunch of young, miserable people taking their anger and confusion out on each other as they struggle to figure out who they are, where they want to end up, and who they want to be when they get there. Life is weird. It is full of unexpected turns and surprises. It is lined with beautiful irony that keeps you on your toes long after that bell rings for the last time.

Keep growing. Keep educating yourself and learning through others and the world around you. Pass your lessons forward in the form of blessings. Let the ones who follow behind you know that they will get out soon. Everything will be okay if they just hold on.

Hold on, you beautiful weirdos. The real world outside of that place is just waiting for you.