You can't truly love someone until you love yourself.
I met you in a mandatory environment; in a class in high school. I was in junior year, you were in senior year. The minute you walked in, I found myself intimidated. Intimidated by your style, your demeanor, who hung around you, who you smiled for.
I knew that we weren't going to coexist.
You were going to be superior, in more ways than one. You had more experience, of course you were going to be among the top. You qualified, to the even more experienced and highly respected teachers. Not only that, but you radiated, you were the few who could take a joke, who desired to party and experiment and laugh with just about anyone until your chest hurt and your reputation had been cemented in.
And here I was, battling with myself. I began this class with no shred of confidence, with love and understanding that I wanted to share with every being but couldn't find it in me to just say what's on my mind. I talked to you when it was mandatory, I addressed you how you should be addressed in this setting, and I went home and tried to muster up the courage to befriend someone, to befriend everyone. I actually spent most of my free time trying to follow everyone from all social media platforms. I wanted to see how they held themselves, what they did on their free time.
You were no exception.
I reached out to you. Come to think of it, I reached out to majority of everyone in that class, but when I stumbled across your page on Facebook, and your feed on Instagram, and your story on Snapchat, I thought I had you all figured out. You were social, you had a million friends, you confided in everyone and they confided in you. Drama through the hallways of school was your superpower, you knew what was going on and you were okay with your name slipping through people's mouths. You just wanted to live through the high school experience traditionally, you wanted to not take everything seriously, high school was supposed to be the best years of your life, you didn't want your case to be extraordinary in that aspect.
But I was wrong.
You might've been in the drama, but you didn't want people to say bad things about you, you didn't want accusations being made against you. You took it to heart, you went home, you went to other classes throughout several months listening to all the bad things people had to say, and you let it stack and stack and stack until it all came crashing down. Until you were battling with yourself. A really ugly battle, one where they pushed you down and you couldn't get up. You hit the pause button on your life; you left school for weeks. We had an idea what it was about, but we couldn't verbalize it, it wasn't fair to. Some had known more than me, a lot of people still know more than I do about what you went through in those weeks that you were gone. Days, as they usually did, dragged with routine and necessities to graduate. Everyone accepted the fact that you were gone; we were aware that it was temporary, but we didn't exactly know just how long temporary really was. We were approaching the end, everyone had accepted what they learned from this class, I had began to reflect and realize that my selfless attributes were okay, that love has degrees and intensities and that I truly loved everyone who had entered my life, and that is just who I am and just what I stand for.
And then you bounced back. Everything for you had changed, you wanted a clean slate, but for that you had to close this chapter of your life and accept that you were different. That your senior year wasn't what people desired, that you had one thing to end on a happy note in your high school career and you weren't going to let anyone take that away from you; your role in the class. But just like that, that had changed too; you were on one side of the fence and we were all standing on the other side of it. Some people climbed over it to check on you, but they still found a way to hop back over to the other side. You were all alone.
It's fair enough to say that I was one of the fence-climbers. I also want to say that I stayed on your side for a while. I wanted to know what was going on, I resorted to doing so through social media, primarily Snapchat. I played the games, I told you my opinion.
And you pushed me away. You didn't mean it. You only let people in who had the means of showing you, who didn't have anything to do with your senior year of high school in itself; you don't need a reminder of that.
I didn't want to believe that anyone else had battles within themselves. I didn't want to comprehend that uncertainty and misunderstanding had also infected those around me. There are so many types of predicaments that people find themselves wrapped in, and I would be lying if I told you that I had always understood yours. I still don't. You're still battling yours.
Drama wasn't your superpower; it was your kryptonite.
And I hope that it all works out for you in the end, and that you discover that confrontation and the truth aren't kryptonite. Might as well help you with your superpowers.
Sincerely,
the person with different battles who is okay with breaking down that fence