High school was the best of times, it was the inspiration for crass literary allusions. I do not know how to tell my story because it is a story of people, of connections. Much of high school was painful, especially the days I felt truly isolated and alone. I am not the person who was a senior in high school and that senior was not the person who was a freshman.
I entered high school four foot eleven weighing nearly 200 pounds. I left high school five foot seven weighing 150 pounds. I heard once that our cells are constantly dying and regenerating; thus, our sell compromise an entirely different person every seven years. I can believe that the twelve-year-old me is gone, relegated to dust on shelves and flakes washed down drains, and I eagerly await the day I am fully free of my thirteen year old self in both mind and body.
I commenced high school as the near physical approximation of a thirteen year old girl–long hair longing to be washed, breasts begging to be restrained by an A cup, and a voice higher than most buildings in my small town. Inside, a mental storm of angst rained on every parade. Four years older and seventeen, I left high school gay and airy, eight inches taller and fifty pounds lighter. By then my thoughts had transformed to match my thirteen year old physical appearance, as too many sticker covered notebooks filled with celebrities torn from the pages of YM can attest to.