On Our Way To Crazy

Have you been watching High School Confidential on WE? I am not kidding, this is the best show on TV. They followed 12 girls for their four years of high school, and each episode focuses on a couple of them and tells their story. It’s just so… real. It’s really moving to watch these freshman girls talk about what they want high school to be and then deal with life when it doesn’t work out that way.

I can’t imagine being 18 (or 27) and watching interviews of myself at 14 talking about all the things I will or won’t do and how things are supposed to be and what life is all about. I would be horrified. I don’t even want to know what I thought six months ago, much less 13 years ago.

It’s almost too difficult for me watch. I just want to reach through the TV and slap some of these parents. Just because she doesn’t speak up about it doesn’t mean your daughter doesn’t want you to work overseas nine months a year. It’s probably not a good idea to marry a guy that you met online two months ago and have only seen in person once. She’s not just joking around when she tries to talk to you about her depression issues. Not talking about things won’t make them go away.

It’s amazing how quickly they suck you in and how involved you feel in their lives. One girl in particular, Jessie, really struck me. She struggled all through high school with pregnancy scares, depression, alcohol, even a miscarriage, but seemed to kind of get it together by the end. She got a scholarship to an arts school in Los Angeles and made plans to move out there after high school. So you get really into her life and are so excited that she’s getting out of Kansas and away from her loser friends. Then they put up a black screen with white text telling you that Jessie had a panic attack a week after she left for California and now works at a Walmart in Kansas City.

GAH. I can’t handle this stuff.

I think we tend to look back on high school through a bit of a fuzzy lens. In hindsight, it’s pretty easy to see that you should have kept playing the violin, or dumped the loser boyfriend, or taken a risk and tried out for the play. But you forget all the stress and agony and drama that went along with all of those decisions, and you want to play down those same feelings in current high school kids.

But that stuff HURTS, y’all. Watching these girls fight with their parents, or get snubbed by their friends, or have a boyfriend leave them… I can still feel it. Sometimes they say something and it immediately takes me back to my bedroom in Mesquite or wherever I was when that stuff happened to me. It sucked then, and it sucks now.

If y’all aren’t watching this show, give it a shot, especially if you’re a girl. And if you know anyone in high school, HUG THEM. They need it. That stuff is so hard.