Last week I watched “Men, Women & Children” a film which follows the troubled lives of high school students and parents in the digital era. Here’s the trailer if you want to take a look for yourself.
The film attempts to capture the essence of today’s high school experience, but it’s too-on-the-nose efforts fall flat and leave audiences doing synchronized eye-rolls. Despite its lack of heart, the film managed to jog my memory, and my high school days vividly returned to my mind. The movie did get something right, and that’s how emotional and difficult high school is for everyone. Yes, everyone. Even Stacy Cheerleading and Jake Football. This became abundantly clear to me when I went on retreats in my junior and senior year of Catholic high school. For those of you who don’t know, high school retreats are basically group therapy sessions with a little Jesus thrown into the mix. Teens sob over their lives and how they “just can’t handle it anymore.” Stacy tells you she hates her parents and that her boyfriend cheats on her. Jake cries that his crush is his best friend’s girlfriend and that his parents are fighting. It sounds melodramatic, and I suppose it is, but I have sympathy for these mini-adults. Teens are ruthless to each other and themselves. They are old enough to realize that their authority figures are humans who lie, cheat and steal. Hormones run rampant. Morals turn gray. Cue the crisis.
When I was a high-schooler, “everything sucked,” as I would commonly say. I festered in the suckiness by coming home everyday and camping on YouTube to watch my favorite music videos. I painted my nails black while watching “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” by My Chemical Romance. I’d watch “Nine in the Afternoon” by Panic! At the Disco to try to cheer myself up, only to fail miserably with sobs of desperation. I was miserable for too many reasons to articulate here in one article, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
You can laugh, don’t worry. I laugh at 16-year-old Cathy all the time. While it seems ridiculous and over-the-top, the emotions I and (almost) all high-schoolers feel are real and debilitating. Now, I can’t help but wonder, “How did we do it? How did we survive high school?” I think it is a remarkable accomplishment, one that should be admired and respected.
During that time of my life, I liked to keep a journal. I wrote in it every single day for at least 10minutes. Every once in awhile, I look back at my journals. In one of my entries I wrote, “Just never forget how it feels to be a teenager.”
I think it’s important to remember that time of life, if for no other reason than to maintain empathy for those who are currently enduring their teen years. As we get older, our memories fade a little more and those vibrant feelings we had seem sillier and sillier. It's easy to simply brush off the woes and troubles of 17-year-old's when you are busy trying to pay off student loans and find a job, but just remember how you felt at that age, and how much a little sympathy could have helped.
