This Is Growing Up

High school. What a joke.  But I wouldn't trade those four years for anything.  I had great friends, a great family, and everything that I knew was always so EASY.  I was handed my life on a silver platter. I really was.  I lived my life up until that point looking for nothing but the arrows along a trail that my parents and teachers had laid out for me from the beginning.  I flew through high school with relatively good grades, and I had the best times in the world, but all the while, I can't remember a single academic thing that I learned. The things that I did learn, though, however awful some of them are, were the beginnings of my finally discovering that I could actually think for myself.

I learned how to hold my liquor and remedy a hangover.
I learned how to jump fences.
I learned that sports are great, but politics are bullshit.
I learned to be a sneak.
I learned to be a fantastic liar.
I learned that being 'insubordinate' is much more exhilarating than following the rules.
I learned to psychologically manipulate authority figures.
I learned how to forge teachers' signatures on attendance slips.
I learned to play music.
I learned to be comfortable getting in front of a crowd and losing my mind.
I learned that I love poetry and literature.
I learned that music is my favorite therapy.
I learned that I have the mental strength to overcome suicide.
I learned that guys are assholes, but girls are no better.
I learned how to open myself to new possibilities and ideas.
I learned that none of these things make me a bad person.
I learned that deviance can be completely okay.

And so many other things.  But could I go back into my memory and explain basic algebra? Not a chance. All these things that I was forced to read and reread, over and over and over again, I never understood why.  It didn't occur to me until recently that I didn't have to understand why.  I was learning through my own experiences, on my own terms.  I was creating an identity for myself.  I was learning how to live for me.