Personal Essay: Red Class

Red Class
Personal essay

Sitting, watching in the middle of lunch this is where it all begins. The cliques, the strong desperation to get a seat with those people over there or to be seen as the person that everybody wants to be with. The confusion is at an all-time high. The top of your priorities are finding friends, being known, getting good grades and making the people around you proud all while trying to stay sane. Music becomes your life and Netflix become your escape. The struggle when some days you just want to crawl in the covers and never come out. “Life only gets harder from here” they tell you and “Wait to you become and adult” seem to be the only thing people are telling you. This is the point in your life when everything changes. This is the moment that you start to figure out life. Insecurities seem to have a huge flashing neon sign over my head. Look there’s a pimple on my forehead, why do I weight so much (is this even normal)? Why don’t I look half as pretty as her? Then the
questions comes, who am I doing all of this for? Is it for me or for someone else? The confusion is at an all-time high. Who do I want to be? Friends start to drift and become far and few. One moment you could be the best of friends with someone, and then the next moment it is all crashing down like the Twin Towers and it seems like you don’t even know that person. I mean little Cathy isn’t so little any more, yeah at one point in her life she was a little immature, but newsflash Cathy isn’t the same, she’s grown up and matured and while she is terribly sorry that you don’t like who she has become, it seems that is time for her to find some new friends. Like Cathy I had to realize that people change and grow and that they may not grow in the ways that I do. It’s hard trying to figure out who I am all while trying to figure out who the people around me are becoming. The overall thing that I have taken away from the start of my journey is that I can’t let people try to change me and I can’t change for anyone. I have to stay true to myself because that’s the only thing that truly matters.

While friends are a bump in the road along my journey, parents don’t make it any better. I think that they have forgotten what’s it like to be a teen and it also doesn’t help that they are the rule makers of the empire which is my life at this point. While I know that “they are only trying to help me”. I don’t need as much help as I did when I was per say 10. Yes, I do know that I don’t know everything and yes I am aware that I am still going to need help, but I don’t need for you to babysit me. I need for you to allow for me to make mistakes and take risk. I do understand that you are not going to approve of all of the decisions that I make cause quite frankly there probably stupid and I know this is not what you want to hear but I am becoming more independent with a bigger ego and pride, and there are some things that I am not going to be willing to change just because you said so (which I hope you know is tempting for me to keep pushing and questioning why?). I just want for you to know that I still love you and that I will always keep your teaching and advice somewhere in my confused mind. On top of all that there’s school.
Yea those dreaded 8 hours that cause for me to have to wake up at six every morning five mornings in a row, with teachers who seem to make it their goal to make me have an aneurism with all the stress of papers, test, exams and grades. The expectations are killer and will probably be the death of me. While school seems to be one of the main reasons why I am always tired and confused. It has given me an amazing experience, I have been given the opportunity to meet super cool people, learn some interesting things and prepare for life outside of a sheltered 8-3:15 life style. It’s given me the essential teachings to learn that yea life isn’t easy and that different people have different expectations from me. All of my comfort zones have been tested and pushed and for that I am thankful because without the constant struggle of trying to stay on top of everything. I would not have learned that I am a strong and dedicated
person. So while yes growing up and being a teen is a struggle but in about 10 years when I go and look back at these years. There will be a smile on my face because then I will have known that the struggle of juggling myself, friends, parents and school would have turned me into the person that now I can only dream of. So thank you friends for changing so that I know who will always be there for me. Thanks mom and dad for always having my back, front, best interest and everything else and for “trying to help me”. A huge thank you to all of my teachers who pushed me to the end of my wits (and when I say pushed I mean like into the deepest and darkest part of the ocean known as middle school), for you have shown me that there is always a light at the end of each tunnel and that I can do anything that I put my mind and many hours of concentration towards. I have learned that you can’t give up and that these years will probably be the best that I will ever be given. So my message to you is to not give up, to stand strong, to know that it’s just fine and dandy to not be ok and that you are going to struggle and yea there are going to be days when you want to become Peter Pan and never grow up (for only it could stay that simple), but it gets better and pretty soon that cloud of confusion is going to drift away into never land.