Dear younger Harper,
I understand that you were young and just wanting to get closer to your peers, but those were the types of people you needed to distance yourself from. I know you didn’t have much of a choice but to hang around them because your school was so small, but you could’ve made some better choices when it came to certain things. I wish you would’ve found this out sooner, but those won’t be your friends for much longer. And actually, you won’t speak to them ever again. They don’t talk to you outside of school, they won’t talk to you after graduation. They don’t invite you out, and they rarely even include you (this should’ve been the first red flag). But you didn’t know that. The people you center yourself around are the same people getting you involved in unnecessary drama that would cost you your reputation. You’ve always been a smart kid that stays out of trouble, but when it comes to defending the people you care about, you turn into a whole different person. They would get into drama and then call on you to help even when you would try to avoid it. Then eventually, you would put your input on the situation, get into arguments, and then, all of the sudden, you would be outside in the hallway talking to a teacher.
Now don’t get me wrong, I still act like that sometimes. I never want to see my friends down and I’m willing to fight for them, but it has its limits. Instead of advocating for the whole group when everyone got in trouble, I should have let others take accountability themselves. And since you were caught up in that crowd, teachers began to look down on you. A teacher would be quick to say “It’s always you four” but you never thought of yourself as a bad kid, so this shocked you. As you realized what this drama was doing to your reputation, you began to distance yourself, but you would always end up back at square one. Why? Did you feel the need to fit in? Or did you feel forced. Either way, you just kept getting involved in drama.
Now let me tell you how much you have changed since sixth grade. You avoid giving your opinion on the drama. Instead, you just give advice. Telling your friends what’s wrong from right isn’t always what they want to hear, but you can’t always tell people what they want to hear. Instead of voicing your frustrations to your friends, you should have talked to teachers. A teacher won’t go and tell the person you’re telling them about out of spite or to start drama. Instead, they’ll tell you what to do when you feel frustrated or how to tune that person out.
Lastly, just avoid the people who start drama. Eighth grade year, you cut off a lot of the friends you thought you would have forever simply because they just weren’t mature enough. And what I mean by “not mature enough” is that they would talk about people just to talk about them and make fun of classmates and teachers. They would never focus on class work, and they were overall disrespectful. That’s the type of energy you never want to put yourself around, especially when growing up. Therefore, ties had to be cut, and that’s okay. I wish there was someone to tell you all of this when it was happening in real time, but we all grow from our mistakes. You’ll get through the rest of middle school just fine. Wishing you the best!!
Xoxo,
Your future self.
Harper Preston – De La Salle Institute – DMSF Class of 2030
Photo Credit: Alex Fotos – Pixabay