The Bane of Human Existence: Part 1

Middle school was an awful time for me, full of gossip girls and obnoxious boys.

See, aside from middle school being awful in general, my school made it 10x worse. For starters, we had uniforms. And though you might think they would be equalizers, they weren't. Not by a long shot. It was like a challenge. The girls who could find the most form fitting uniforms and accessorize the most without going over the limit were among the "popular" girls.

I was not a popular girl. I had lose fitting shirts and only a few pairs of pants that were washed and worn over and over again. And I never really had a burning desire to be part of that crowd.

I didn't act like a "popular" girl either. I was pretty nerdy. So was my group of friends, even though they didn't really want to admit it.

It was an arts school with a student count of about 500 in total, kindergarten through 12th grade. It was a small school and news traveled fast. No one's crush stayed secret for very long. Including mine. Despite my group of friends not being popular, we had plenty of drama. There were gossip girls, weird relationships, betrayals, divas, etc.

I bring this stuff up to tell the girls still stuck in middle school that it does get better. I had friends talk behind my back. There was even a couple of girls who were my "friends" who told the guy I liked that I had a crush on him. Thank God he wasn't in any of my classes at the time! But it was still super embarrassing.

I was helping with my church's youth group recently and, as expected, most of the middle school girls were talking about boys and who they had a crush on. One of the girls' crushes was at youth group and her friend ended up embarrassing her in front of him.

This girl kind of freaked out and got really frustrated with her friend. As I watched and tried to calm her down, I realized that back when I was in middle school, I would have reacted exact the same way.

Back then, it felt like the end of world. Now, I hardly even think about middle school. I only see two people from way back then. Life goes on after middle school. You just have to get through the war zone.

Hope you enjoyed reading about my past. Have a great day, thanks for reading and if you're still stuck in middle school, hang in there! It's survivable!