~ we had to reflect on our junior high years for english. we had a period to work. heres what he got. he really liked it tho. yay last paper of my ninth grade year!!! *tears* ~
Junior high. A transition between the itty-bitty elementary years and the big-bad high school. A time of new friends, new changes, new lessons.
The biggest event in my junior high years that directly affected how I act and feel in school happened just before Christmas break of my ninth grade year. My best friend for three years, (let’s call her Eileen), decided that I wasn’t good enough. I’d been going through a lot at home, trying to cope with the face that my dad’s cancer wasn’t getting any better and other family issues. I always tried to put a brave face on it, not let it affect my school work too much, only talk about it when absolutely necessary.
I’m one of those people who just hold back their emotion until they pop. A very good friend of mine once compared this “disorder” to a bottle of soda being shaken, then the cap being loosened. I’m sure you can imagine or might even have experienced the results of such actions. That’s how it feels to hold back, hold back; until the stupidest, slightest thing can set you off. And things happen and are said that you can't even imagine.
So with all these pressures behind me, I started to feel lousy. And I just didn’t realize at the time that other people were noticing the change. To quote my ex-“best” friend Eileen: “you’re just not happy enough anymore Jo. You act like the world is ending.”
Silence.
Crickets.
I’m sorry, but a best friend should be there for comfort. I understand that she might not have realized the situation was as bad as it was. But when I tried to explain how it felt to watch the strongest man in my life and world, slowly fading, fearing that I would lose him at any moment and how I felt I had a right to be upset, I got terrible reactions. I was accused of being a drama queen. I was told that I was using the fact that my dad had cancer to get attention.
These comments made a part of my heart die. To hear them from people I had once loved, admired, trusted, tore me apart, inside and out. And I was suddenly forced to see things that I had been ignoring for far too long, making me look and feel like a fool.
Junior high is definitely a place and time of changes. And we can try to fight them, but in the end, we just have to move on, praying that God will show us the reasons why He puts so much pain in our way.
She was changing. She wanted to be cool. She wanted to be hip. She wanted to be “in”. And I was clearly holding her back, for the simple reason that I was not changing at the same rate or in the same direction as her.
I cried so much for those lost days. Days of innocence and friendship that seemed like it would go on forever. But that day she turned her back on all that, for someone newer, better, the improved model. I was the best friend that lost the glitter, the shine.
After a while, I stopped fighting it. I tried to move on. At the time, I felt like I wasn’t going to make it. I held onto the small hope that she would changer her mind; realize what she had turned down. But as I slowly moved on, mending my broken heart, I realized I didn’t want or need her back. I realized that my best friends were the ones who stepped up when there seemed to be no one. They lifted me up and I learned the true meaning of friendship. And my future is a whole lot brighter!
So, moral of the story: changes happen every day. Eileen walked away from our friendship. That was her choice. It’s in the past and I can't changer her decision. And now, I believe I can finally say that I am thankful, in not glad, that she did.
That event in my life changed me. Possibly forever. But things happen, we move on, we change as we need and see fit. And we have to learn to take those times to heart and try our hardest to get the most out of it, bad or good.
The longest, hardest, most emotional lesson I had to learn in junior high. But I’m here, I’m alive, and I’m a better person for it.
