I graduated high school in the mid-1980s. I attended winter formals and proms, and by the end of senior year was even dating a girl (but that’s a story for another time). By senior year, I’d made a number of friends, many more than I had at my previous school. I moped my way through junior year at my new school, but also started to make friends.
I was scared, but could it be any worse? When we moved away, it was a quiet disappearing act as I hardly said goodbye to anyone. But I think a part of me sensed an opportunity for escape. Even though I was at my lowest point with so few friends, I bitched and moaned. Halfway through high school, my dad got a job out of state, and we moved. This was my secret shame, and to this day there are very few people I’ve shared this with. I didn’t want to explain to her what was going on, let alone tell anyone else. Sometimes I’d walk home, but if I saw my mom’s car parked in the driveway I’d turn back. I was determined not to have that happen, so instead, I took long walks alone through the neighborhood, returning to school just as lunch break ended. We’ve all seen those teen movies where the rejected kid holds their tray and fretfully scans the lunchroom, looking for a friendly face to sit with, and I expect some reading this have experienced this themselves. As “unluck” would have it, my one friend was assigned to the opposite lunch break as me, so I had nobody to hang out with at lunch. We went to a big high school, so big that lunch break was split into two separate consecutive sessions. Eventually, I started losing friendships and found I had fewer and fewer friends.īy high school, I had just one good friend. As I entered adolescence, sometimes I’d become angry and pick fights with friends, or they’d pick fights with me.
What turned out to be more unsettling, and actually devastating, was not that I was picked on, but that over time I became left out and forgotten.
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