Recently on Twitter I saw a tweet that ever since I read, I kept thinking about. It was something along the lines of, “I feel bad for people who actually think high school was the best time of their lives.” If I had saw that tweet while I was in high school, or even probably a year after I graduated, I would have totally agreed.

Some people genuinely had a blast in high school. They made lifelong friends, had their first love, and felt comfortable in their skin. I am not one of those people. High school sucked. It took a lot of effort for me to walk into school every morning.

But that’s okay, because I’m a junior in college now. I guess I’ve had time to reflect, and I realize now that it’s really only a handful of kids from your high school that would honestly say those were the best four years of their lives.

I get now why that would be the case, even though I couldn’t imagine what I was doing wrong when I was in high school hating it. The truth is, there’s a lot of factors that determine your high school years. Things like mental health issues, family problems, unhealthy relationships, bullying, insecurities in general, and lots of other things can make high school hell.

Here’s where this is going: Whether you wish high school never ended or you couldn’t wait to get out of there, high school is not forever. Don’t regret loving it and don’t feel like you did something wrong if you hated it. Whatever your high school experience was, life goes on.

It’s okay if high school was the worst time in your life, because I guarantee that you wouldn’t be the person you are today if you hadn’t lived and learned during that time. You are a badass for surviving it. And the good news is, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you and you never have to see those people, go to that school, or think about any of it again.

It’s also okay if you loved it. Good for you! Don’t let anyone make you feel like you weren’t allowed to have a good time high school. You are one of the few; you’re like a rare species of butterfly. To be honest, high school is hard, kudos to you for making the best of it. You are never going to be that young, dumb, and reckless again.