Every day, in every way
I've been smiling a lot recently.
I have to warn you, this is going seem like a pretty emo post. I don't want it to be, and that's not how it's intended, but that is probably how it's going to end up sounding.
To understand why I've been smiling, you have to back to last October. I had started school and was actually enjoying it, for a change. I was pretty satisfied with the majority of my classes and teachers and I was optimistic about my social situation. I might not have been completely happy, but I was optimistic. And then I got sick.
Sickness has played a large part in my life, because I get sick more than most people, and stay sick longer than most people. I can't pretend that it's all physical, either; if I'm happy, I am more likely able to ignore sickish feelings and continue, but if I'm unhappy, than I'll probably give in and use it as an excuse, which is not to say that it is not sometimes valid.
The point is, I got sick, and stayed sick, for too long. I missed too much school work to make up. It wasn't anything serious, just serious enough. So I left school.
Homeschooling is something that sounds great to a lot of kids. Hey, you get to stay home, get up whenever you want, don't even have to get dressed, you make your own schedule. What could be better? The problem is that a lot of kids, including me, find it incredibly hard to motivate themselves into doing something that maybe they would rather not be doing. That is, studying things that aren't that interesting, or memorizing vocabulary, or whatever. That's one problem.
The other problem, the one that people who haven't home schooled are not equipped to understand, is the loneliness. When you're in school, you see people at least nearly every day. Maybe it's not always your friends that you see, but you're still around people, still talking, still socializing. When you're home schooled, you get none of that. On a good week I'd get to see one friend over the weekend, and maybe once a month a few at a time, but that was essentially the limit of my social life. There's no hanging out. You can phone people, you can talk to them online, you can do whatever, and sometimes it seems like it makes it better, but much of the time it just serves to make you realize how far away they really are. The loneliness is terrible.
For six months, I was, I realize now, pretty depressed. I felt bad, physically, most every day. One of the problems, of course, is it's hard to say if I was sick because I was depressed or if I was depressed because I was sick or, more likely, that it was just a cycle. Whatever it was, it wasn't fun.
Then, just over a month ago, I went back to school. Not to the same school, oh no; I doubt they'd even have me back. I went to a very different place, pretty much the absolute polar opposite. My old school had a lot going for it: relatively small class sizes; kick-ass teachers and academics; good facilities and funding. But it had a lot against it, too: too many jocks; it was ultra-conservative; while pretending to be non-denominational, they had mandatory, overtly Christian chapels, which is fine with me, so long as you don't lie about what it is.
What everyone will tell you about high school is that the more unpopular you are, the better chance you have at succeeding in life. I don't doubt this, though I have not personally seen it in action. It's a comforting idea. When you're an outcast, it's nice to have something you think you can look forward to. But I was pretty miserable, socially. I had, essentially, one really good friend, and by the end of my first year I had made another. Better than none, of course.
It was different when I came to my new school. After a few weeks, there were more kids there that I felt closer to, more comfortable talking to, than after nine months at my old school. It's about a tenth the size of my old school, and maybe a lot of the goodness comes out of that. Pretty much everybody knows everybody else. And the vast majority of them get along. The thing that gets to me is how much more open it felt. There was none of that fakeness that you get used to.
It's run very differently, too, but that's a whole separate post in and of itself.
I guess that's mostly the reason I've been smiling a lot. After a long, too long, time of isolation, things changed dramatically and quickly. I got around people, I got friends, I got happy. This is where I think I sound the most emo, but I honestly can't remember the last time I felt this happy. It's not just some up and down thing, it's consistent, and I find that I actually look forward to the next day. Definitely an unusual feeling. And just about a week and a half ago, my new school had prom, and I invited a girl (three guesses who), and it worked out, and it gave me another reason to be happy.
I've been smiling a lot, and it feels good.
