{"id":10082,"date":"2020-10-28T13:03:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T18:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=10082"},"modified":"2020-10-28T13:04:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T18:04:16","slug":"the-girl-who-peaks-in-high-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2020\/10\/28\/the-girl-who-peaks-in-high-school\/","title":{"rendered":"The Girl Who Peaks in High School"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If graduation never came, I&#8217;d be okay with that. I&#8217;d be over the moon, jumping for joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I hear my friends, who are also seniors say things like, &#8220;I&#8217;m so ready to graduate,&#8221; or &#8220;I can&#8217;t wait to be in college,&#8221; but I can&#8217;t help but cringe at them. I have absolutely no desire to graduate or leave high school.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I have spent the past 4 years in total bliss. I truly believe people when they say that these are the best years of your life because they have been. I&#8217;m not particularly &#8220;popular,&#8221; but I&#8217;ve always had a really great group of friends and people who support me. If my classmates were to describe me, they&#8217;d probably say something like, &#8220;Maleigh&#8217;s that weird, overexuberant girl that&#8217;s always planning events and making cheesy jokes,&#8221; and I am okay with that. I know who I am, and I&#8217;m not ashamed of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I am ashamed, however, of being someone who peaks in high school, but I&#8217;m afraid it&#8217;s too late for that. I just simply can&#8217;t imagine that things can get any better than this amazing life. People say high school is overrated, but it&#8217;s my safe haven. In school, I excel. I may not be valedictorian or in the top 5 of my class, but I make good grades, I&#8217;m in a ton of extracurriculars, teachers love me. What&#8217;s not to love? Not to mention, I&#8217;m student body president which, I must add, was one of the best things to ever happen to me. I can&#8217;t express how much I truly love being a leader and getting to plan things and make things happen on campus. It&#8217;s one of the most rewarding feelings to serve the student body of MSA, and I don&#8217;t want to have to leave that behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Yesterday, after writing that, I felt compelled to visit the counselor. I was really struggling, and I&#8217;m not usually one to ask for help, but it seemed like something I <em>needed<\/em> to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After our visit, I left teary-eyed, but I also left with having told another human being how I was really feeling. Too often I swallow my emotions and force a smile no matter how I&#8217;m feeling, so it was a huge step for me to admit my shortcomings, or what I think are shortcomings, and be unashamed to say them out loud.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In my house, you just don&#8217;t talk about these things. Everything must be kept private, concealed, but what if we did talk\u00a0 more? What if we acknowledged that we are , in fact, riding the struggle, or have been for far too long. Because, at that point, we are taking the first step in taking care of ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, I took the first step, and I talked to someone. I said, &#8220;Hey, I&#8217;m not okay,&#8221; and I was met with open arms and unicorn encouragement cards (Thanks, Mrs. Harlie). So, take that first step, and <span style=\"font-size: inherit;\">take care of yourselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m still not completely sold on the idea of this not being my peak, but I have moved closer to accepting that and reminding myself that this is only the beginning of greatness and that there is so much more to come for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So, maybe I won&#8217;t be the girl who peaks in high school or maybe I will, but today, I am choosing to just be a writer, to just be me.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If graduation never came, I&#8217;d be okay with that. I&#8217;d be over the moon, jumping for joy.\u00a0 I hear my friends, who are also seniors say things like, &#8220;I&#8217;m so ready to graduate,&#8221; or &#8220;I can&#8217;t wait to be in college,&#8221; but I can&#8217;t help but cringe at them. I have absolutely no desire to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2020\/10\/28\/the-girl-who-peaks-in-high-school\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Girl Who Peaks in High School&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10082"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10245,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082\/revisions\/10245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}