A Map for Self-Discovery: Unpacking Junior Year, Uncovering Life's Truths
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My junior year of high school was impactful for me. And in many ways that I might not be able to express—by that I mean, in the way that so many meaningful things make perfect sense as they exist within the personal balance of our physical and emotional purview, and then make so little sense as soon as you hear them pass through your lips and toward anyone listening who might question your sanity and think “wtf does that mean?” silently but wearing the thought openly in very obvious macro-expressions across their face. Junior year was the year I was introduced to psychology academically. The school offered upperclassmen the opportunity to enroll in the course. Until then, and after my first passion was casually dismissed, I wanted to be an Oceanographer; yup, you read that right, I was interested in the shit we lost in the ocean. I love history, not so much academically but tangibly. I was immediately drawn to psychology's concept of human development as a continuous, dynamic process, where emotional and behavioral instability become opportunities for growth and self-discovery—and junior year stood out as the year with my most meaningful childhood romantic relationship.
Our relationship with science and history merges somewhere among the layers of psychology. We often mistakenly assume science provides us with absolute truth. Instead, we construct knowledge through personal interpretations and subjective frameworks, which can be swayed by the perspectives and interests of those presenting the information. We are so caught up on being right and we start developing our stories within the context of how we would like them to be; we’re capable of objectivity but only consciously, however conscious actions and reactions are difficult for us. Studying psychology helped me to explore questions about myself, people, and society, in ways that I had never considered. Understanding psychology changed my life and taking Coach Padilla’s Psychology AP course in high school presented an avenue to plan my life. This was the first time I had a road map that might lessen some of the apprehension I had about growing up. A sort of weight was lifted off of my shoulder’s junior year. A weight that may have been alleviated some with the comfort of familiarity, I was familiar with my surroundings but for the first time, I was starting to feel comfortable. Junior year was probably my favorite year of high school, and I don’t remember much of it.
There are pockets of time throughout my life when I recall some periods more clearly than others. Memory is fascinating: why we remember and what, where we store our memories and how, how we retrieve memory, and when. There are indistinct moments throughout my life that occur because of specific things that happened, my mind suppressed those moments for whatever reasons. And there are indistinct moments because I wasn’t living presently. I was often living for tomorrow. As an adult, I aspired to a particular life that I wanted, and it wasn’t what I had, so while life unfolded around me, I was rarely there in the moment to explore it. If, when you close your eyes attempting to retrieve a specific memory, what you experience is a dark spot with a fleeting feeling—static where a memory should be—it’s likely that, while you were physically there, you weren’t present to capture and store that particular memory. We record the time but often miss the moment. Thinking about it can make you wonder how many things you missed, how many people, stories, feelings, and possibilities that never were merely because your mind was elsewhere.
I’ve stored too many memories this way. It’s unfortunate for me because I have had so many remarkable experiences that, while I was physically there, I wasn’t experiencing the moment. This is part of the reason I’m writing this autobiographical series, to experience the memories, even if it is after the fact, and so that I allow myself to relive and recount these moments, many of which I’ve forgotten—almost like a detox. Have you ever allowed yourself to sit with a moment so deeply that you drift into the thoughts and memories constantly competing for your attention, passing through your consciousness like a whirlpool, grasping at thoughts as they pass by, and planning to catch them when they come back around? Once you do settle into a memory it’s uncomfortable, most people shake it away for one less embarrassing, but if for whatever reason you allowed yourself to settle into this self-conscious memory and you explore and unravel it until it’s not so uncomfortable, you’ve accepted something, and you step out of the experience feeling a little lighter. Imagine doing that with all your memories. The comfortable and uncomfortable memories alike.
The second experience began one morning fairly early into the school year. I walked to our bench in the courtyard, a handful of people were standing around a floater friend who spent time in a few different groups of bodies. He was sitting on the bench with his head in his hands. “What’s going on?” I asked someone nearby, “Sadie broke up with him last night.” Sadie and he had been dating for a few months, we didn’t know much about her before the pair started dating and he introduced her to us. We’ll call him Jared. And I’m calling her Sadie. I sat down next to Jared on the bench and asked how he was doing, understandably broken he expressed mixed feelings (I’m doing alright, but…) and then lifted his hands from his head and stared right at me, “…and you know what the last thing she said to me was?” I shook my head because I didn’t know the last thing she said to him. “Sadie said, “Do you think James will still talk to me?” “Me?” I said pointing…to…myself. “Uh, yeah. Why do you think she said that?” I was flabbergasted, I didn’t have a response, because I genuinely didn’t know. That being said, admittedly, I had a bit of a crush on Sadie.
Coincidentally, two of my and Jared’s friends, and I had Drama that morning, first period; as the stars would fate, Sadie also had Drama first period that morning. The classroom was laid out with couches instead of desks. Sadie was sitting alone and nervous directly ahead of the couch where two of my best friends and I were sitting. We whispered among ourselves for a few minutes, talking about the right thing to do in the situation, evaluating the “Bro Code,” so to speak. After a few minutes, I hurdled over the couch, startling Sadie momentarily, taming the uncomfortable elephant, and resetting the natural order. This is one of those timeline moments, where a single choice affects the course of your life. There are so many more of these moments when we’re younger than when we’re older. And I sincerely wish that wasn’t true. I let Sadie know that her relationship with us would be unaffected by our bilateral relationship with Jared, we were all still her friends. Over the next few months, Sadie and her best friend Heather slowly became more established with our immediate group than Jared. No, Jared wasn’t pushed out, but remember he was a floater, a part of and separate from the core members of our entourage, and Sadie and Heather were becoming pillars.
And yes, Sadie and I eventually started dating. It had been months, not days or weeks, since that morning on the bench in the courtyard, and I could tell straight away that this was not like any relationship I had previously been in. I spent lots of time with Sadie’s family at her house, becoming familiar with her unruffled behaviors and traditions. During winter break I tagged along on a ski trip with her that was organized by her church, to Winter Park, Colorado. One of our things was that I would kiss the back of her hand whenever we parted, I remember that for some reason (and that I discovered bagels during this trip). Our relationship was good. Sadie’s family dynamic was that her mother reigned, she would say something, and it was the role of anyone else in the family to do it. This was the relationship between her parents as well. Unwittingly Sadie adopted her mother’s attitude and while her mother rarely came across as “bossy,” Sadie was un-practiced, and her behavior was different. Sadie did come across as bossy. I remember walking into the cafeteria one morning before school looking for Sadie where she and her friends gathered in the mornings. I sat down and Sadie seemed annoyed. I hadn’t shaved in a day or two and that upset her. Little reactions like that became more common, and as those little things became more common, I became more apprehensive about our relationship. Our relationship was more mature than I was; I had been floating through life so far like a feather in the wind, unrestricted, undisciplined, and thoughtless. I was essentially uninvolved in the direction of my life, with very little responsibility.
Sadie’s developing bossiness and consistent frustration about my general state of being—at least that’s how it felt—made me nervous. Meanwhile, there was another girl I was starting to spend time with, well not “starting” to spend time with, she was part of Sadie’s group before I came along, and so often being around Sadie meant spending time with this other girl. On the surface, not physically, but with all the tired, raw, unsexy behaviors that Sadie seeped and was now glaringly obvious to me, I could ignore those unfiltered qualities about this other girl because I was oblivious to them. I wasn’t sincerely interested in the other girl, but I did need a change. With junior prom just around the corner, I grappled for weeks with the dilemma of whether to break up with Sadie before or after the dance. Years later, I realized I should have shared my feelings with Sadie. I never considered the idea that she and I could have sat down and talked about my thoughts, feelings, and concerns, and in turn, for me to listen to hers never occurred to me. Instead, I wrote a letter, I don’t remember exactly what I said, and I gave it to her either during lunch or after school. I stood there while she read it. We were standing in the parking lot next to a mammoth streetlight with a cement base thick enough to sit, and the dormant lights hovered above us watching my every thoughtless reaction. It was a strange and memorable moment.
Sadie looked up at me after reading and said, “Can I say anything, or is this final?” I said, “I’m sorry…” I don’t remember saying anything else or anything about that day. I asked the other girl to prom, and she said “No,” of course, as any sane person would; I had just broken up with her friend, and her other friends decided that I broke up with Sadie because I wanted to take a different girl to prom. Instead, I took Mary Beth Farmer to prom. We had a good night. I rented a tux. We were part of a small group that ate at Benihanas and went together to the dance. I think about Mary from time to time, she died a few years after high school. Thinking back on this, it’s obvious that I got emotionally stuck in that moment in the parking lot with Sadie. I never actually settled into the decision to break up with her. I merely didn’t want to shoulder the feeling of unease anymore. In the end, breaking up with Sadie was the right decision, however, it was the wrong time, and I went about it the wrong way, not for Sadie’s sake but for mine, regardless of prom, the other girl, and my uneasiness. I missed a valuable chance to practice open communication. And the missed opportunity to practice moving feelings from the inside out, to learn how to relate to that distinction, and to separate my two selves; my inner self and my public self.
I’m trying to charge through the childhood phase of this series, it’s the least interesting part of my life—if not only because I can’t remember much of it. I have since remembered a few occurrences from earlier posts that I forgot to mention, and I have also since forgotten [again] some of those occurrences. There are a few that I would have shared. I wanted to combine junior and senior years in this, but at least one story from my senior year is too long to include in this already mounting narrative; perhaps I’ll write a Patter song to quickly address those memories I forgot to remember in an upcoming essay. Revisiting junior year, I'm struck by the nostalgia and regret that lingers. Still, I recognize that those experiences paved the way for my growth. As I navigate life's complexities, I'll carry the lessons of junior year: the importance of presence, open communication, and embracing life's uncertainties. So many of those lessons I might have neglected had I not revisited them later in life, maybe midlife crises occur because we deny ourselves the time for sincere introspection and the condition of self-respect and -insight that comes from self-reflection throughout life, especially throughout our thirties.