Standing on the edge of the crowd, I watch a girl anxiously twisting a few strands of her long brown hair, her feet shuffling against the scratched linoleum. She's trying to look, without looking, at a group of three or four girls who are standing together, giggling, and trying very hard to obviously not look back at her. One in the group turns on her cell phone and swipes a few times, bringing up an image that she shows to the others, and they laugh, now looking openly at the lone girl. I can see the indecision in her face, her gaze falling downward. Running away really doesn't help, but the fight or flight instinct is there all the same. Her hands smooth down her skirt, over and over, needing something to do. My own heart aches for her, because I recognize the feelings all too well.
I left middle school nearly three decades ago, and I've said often over the years that those are times you couldn't pay me to live again. It's so incredibly hard to be that age, to be stuck between childhood and adult, to be assaulted 24/7 by your own hormones and emotions - everything just feels so much more intense when you are thirteen. Once upon a time, I was convinced that my world was ending at least once a week. Clearly, it never did end, and I survived, sometimes wiser and most of the time hiding the hurt so no one else would see, because to show weakness in middle school was to label yourself as a victim. Girls at that age are vicious, being most cruel to those they label as "friend." The opposite sex is a mystery, and early forays into dating meant late nights up reading way too much meaning into casual encounters and hushed phone conversations.
This was all before internet was a thing, when cell phones were in experimental stages, when talking on the phone after ten without your parents finding out was its own art form. There was no texting, and secret conversations in class were done by means of passing notes, covertly, and hoping your teacher wouldn't see and read your note aloud for the whole class - including the boy you had a crush on - to hear. We learned to think carefully about what we put in writing. Not only could you be embarrassed, but once those words were out there, in ink, you couldn't take them back. Talking behind someone's back was one thing, but leaving evidence of that was entirely something different. And who knows what person might decide to share the note you gave them in confidence, just because they wanted to start trouble.
Drama. It was at the center of every day of my life when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old. There was drama with my parents, with my friends, teachers, the girls who didn't like me for reasons I'd never grow to understand, and the girls who used to be my friends but decided I wasn't popular enough, also for reasons I would never grow to understand. In other words, while I had some really great memories from middle school, most of what I remember are moments of quiet punctuated by intense drama and angst. Growing up, I guess I thought that all of that would change, but looking at some recent moments in my life, I realize we're still all still carrying those thirteen year olds around inside of us, and none of those emotions really change, just the way we handle ourselves in the midst of them. And I'm still struggling to understand it.
I have a friend who is very straight-forward. If she is angry with you, she will tell you. If she loves you, she will tell you that as well. When there is a man in whom she is interested, she walks up and lets him know. No apologies, no drama. And I envy her. She has all the same emotions, insecurities and fears as the rest of us, but the way she's learned to cope as an adult is as far from that middle school hallway as she could get. I still hide behind the politeness that was beat into me growing up, hiding my own anger and very seldom telling anyone what I really want. But a drama diva, I'm not.
Raising two teenage daughters of my own, there are plenty of emotions running high in our house, and sometimes I feel like a fraud, trying to teach these young women to cope with the highs and lows, when I really haven't figured it out for myself. I interact great with the opposite sex - as long as you're talking about in a meeting, debating a book, or exchanging blows in a boxing match. Navigating emotionally? Not so much.
I know that we are forever imprinted by the things in our lives when we are in our early teens. The reasoning portion of our brain is all but hibernating, while the limbic system is on hyperdrive. The music we hear at fifteen, we will forever think is the best music ever (and most of what I remember is really pretty bad). We forever connect to that first love. We are drawn to the friends we had during those years, and we carry the scars of the fights, and humiliations, and the nothings that felt like everything. But lately, I think the emotional approaches we have during those years also imprint on us, and lay down the foundation of how we are going to deal with ourselves and others for years to come. I know that I can rationally talk myself out of most behaviours, but the hurt, the jealousy, the self-doubts, and the giddy joy still create chaos within me. I can control my outward reactions, but inwardly, I am still a seething mess. So, I'm toying with a theory that if I could teach my children to calmly declare both their emotions and their intentions, they'd lay down a whole different kind of framework for their adult emotional blow-outs, possibly saving them thousands of dollars in wine and ice cream later in life. But certainly giving them an empowerment that most of us do not have the luxury of owning.
Now, I'm the adult, and I can intervene for that girl in the hallway and I can force her friends to stop behaving like itty bitty bitches, but I can't change the imprinting that has already happened. Will she be the woman who stands and lets a boss wrongfully fire her, while she stares at her feet. Or will she be the date rape victim because she didn't feel like she had the right to say no, even though she never actually said yes. Will she let opportunities pass by in her life, because she was too afraid to walk up and say, "I want this. I want you. You make me happy/angry/giddy and I own those feelings?" So, I'm learning to do better with faking it until I make it, hoping that the young girls in my life can see some hope at the end of a tunnel that's filled with a lot of tears and laughter and fear and heart-pounding puppy love - usually all at once. I know I still feel that way sometimes - I think it's part of being alive. But letting it consume us isn't. Let's condition our children to embrace their emotions, rather than running or hiding from them, and check the drama at the door.
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