I went to high school from 1971-1975.
I remember it vividly.
A lot of really bad things happened to me in high school.
Occasionally, i felt happy but then sometimes a wave of
depression and sadness would rise up and overwhelm. It felt
like the feelings would rise up out of the ground and swamp
me with their intensity.
It was years before I could come to a place that was safe
enough to tell what I had expereinced.
Something bad happened, there was no one to tell.
No one to take up for you.
No one to take your part. If you told, you were punished
worse. There were no choices except to survive the four
years and then get away.
You hear people talk about the "good old days."
Those were the bad old days. I've heard people say that
"high school was the best days of their lives." How sad to
think that someone's life peaked when
they were seventeen years old.
Now is the good old days.
Mixed media collage
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wanted to say what the abuser had said to me. This is my senior year photograph from high school. See the smiling
face? The image doesn't show it clearly, but written across this image is all the lies I was told. You have to look at it in
the right light, at the right angle and it is very clear.
I felt like that in high school a lot. I didn't know then that decent people couldn't have imagined what was happening to
me. I thought that if people just looked at me the right way, they would see how much I hurt, how much I needed help
and then someone would step up and save me.
That didn't happen for years after high school. But finally, Someone did look at me just right.