The High School Experience

Been binge watch 13 Reasons Why since morning, so I guess this write up has something to do with it, inspired by it.

Being sick means you have some good time to yourself, to ponder and reflect on the direction your life is taking. Watching 13 Reasons Why kind of made me rewind back to school days.

High school can be a real bitch sometimes. You want to conform to a set of made up rules, be seen with and as the cool kids at school. It's all a popularity contest. Anything unique and you'll be seen as an outcast. 

Kids can be real cruel. They'll make fun at your imperfections, call you names and tease and poke fun at you. They can be unforgiving and relentless. Sometimes you eventually let these things get to you. You just want to run away from this bullying and teasing. Don't want to run into them. 

Thus you start wearing a mask, putting up a front to shield yourself from the things they throw at you. You don't want them to see the real you. You want to be seen as cool and popular, thus loosing sight of yourself. In order to be accepted you become somebody. You know one slight mistake will not be forgotten. 

You try and hang out with the cool kids, or at least hang around with them, so that you can seem to fit in. Do the things they do, no matter how wrong it may seem. Your every actions and every decisions is influenced by your friends, what would they do, what do they do and why you can't do the same? This is not peer pressure but conforming to a set type often going along with pranks that may not seem right. Thus loosing your identity and uniqueness.

And this doesn't stop here. It continues to follow us in college and our career. We butt kiss, suck up, hang around, socialise, all in the name of climbing up the social and career ladder. Once again loosing ourself, keeping our true self hidden. We are sure that if they get to know an aspect of us, people will never understand, cause that aspect doesn't conform to set principles. 

We turn our backs on people who really care about us, genuine friends and lovers, who love us for who we truly are and not what we put up. We just ignore them or turn them away, because we don't want to accept ourselves, to be ourselves, and we have difficulty in accepting them cause we do not accept ourselves and our lives. Thus making our lives empty and superficial.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, is all about our need to be loved and accepted. To be admired by one and all. We put our lives out there for people to like, love and judge. For people to stalk and jerk off. It's our lives in the open. Again another way of trying to conform.

I am not too sure if things will ever change or if we could live our lives as who we truly are, open, proud and free. Not conforming to any standards and rules, not being bracketed in life. I really hope it comes soon.

P.S. 13 Reasons Why continues to show how bad our and backward Hindi shoes are.e