now, we have the phases of high school’s past.
9th grade was relatively harmless. i’d say it was a mix of the tail-end of my emo phase that gradually morphed into that tumblr-esqe, black grid patten skirt and choker number that was 2015 in a nutshell; the only difference was now twenty one pilots and halsey and bleachers got thrown into the shuffle. sorta weird and confusing, but still harmless (i also met dan and phil the summer after freshman year because unlike most people who started watching them when they were 13, i didn’t stop watching them and start hating on them and their fanbase). this year was pretty boring, but i wasn’t nearly as melancholic and miserable as i was in 8th grade, so i guess it’s an improvement.
but i think 10th grade is when i truly came into my element. the summer before, i went from a good four years of wearing the stereotypical nerd glasses and found my way to these beautiful horn-rimmed ray bans yall may recognize from my actual face. oh, and those bands i hated in middle school? LOVE them. this was the year i truly indulged in thrift store sweaters and photography and writing and every other association that typically comes with coffeeshop hipsters. granted, this stuff existed in my life in some form or facet before they truly became my hipster tendencies (for the record, i was all about space before that galaxy trend in 2013), but now they’d all accumulated into this mass of pretension. i’d also made a spotify account, which meant my taste in music was finally expanding beyond the emo remnants of middle school. mentally, it was a bit uppy-downy, but i was doin’ pretty okay.
and now we’re reached 11th grade. the style aesthetic of sweaters and other comfortable, typically warm clothing has stuck around, but now i have jeans with holes in them and i’ve made my way back around to black jeans which is fun i guess. i need to get new glasses, but i’m most likely gonna stick with similar frames. i still love bands like fall out boy and panic! at the disco and muse and all the other bands i discovered throughout middle school, but i’ve also come to embrace the softer, more obscure side of alternative (aka, i started listening to indie folk). i’ve fallen in love with bands like ok go and arcade fire and bright eyes, as well as artists like st. vincent and tom rosenthal. it’s definitely a shift from the music library on my old iphone 4.
phases are weird. the person i was just four years ago and the person i am today are two very different people, but some of our edges still line up. i still love doctor who and sherlock, i still love dan and phil, i still hold on to fall out boy and panic! at the disco, i still hold on to those formative obsessions of my youth. they made me who i am, and though i may cringe at them sometimes, i’m still grateful for the person they’ve helped me become. the things we love help up grow, even if we only love them for a little while.
but at least i never had a horse phase.
