Because High School's Never Over

Blog hopping. We all do it. We get online and creep from one friend's blog to another and before we know it we are on a complete stranger's blog--or, even worse, someone we knew in a former life. And that, my friends, is where all my insecurities came unraveling at my fingertips.

A few nights ago I came across a blog circle--web, really--of the high school "It Girls." You all know the ones. Pretty. Popular. Perfect. I hadn't thought about these people in years, yet I was riveted. It was the same kind of compulsion that makes you pick up People while waiting in line at the grocery store. These "love to hate 'em" celebrities of my awkward years had their lives displayed before me. I had to read on. What were they up to? Do they have kids? Who were their husbands? Are they even all that witty and brilliant?

Yes, many of them have kids, nice houses, husbands I'm not surprised by. I logged off later that night with that same feeling of insignificance and insecurity that plagued me during junior high. Sometimes it can't be stopped--I was making tally marks in my mind: I am single and live in a basement apartment with a crazy woman for a landlady. They are married and live in beautiful houses. I am in student loan debt up to my ears and chose to work as a teacher, for crying out loud! They get to stay home with their babies. They are still beautiful and radiant. I look like a tired new teacher that should lighten up on the carbo-loads.

I slept that night with one phrase on my mind: They. Still. Win.

Of course, the next evening I determined to return and read a little deeper, think with clearer eyes, and I came to the conclusion that they are just people like the rest of us and, frankly, several of them aren't witty at all. And I am an accomplished, beautiful, intelligent, witty, funny gal who is okay with where I am at in life, regardless of them. And when I was in high school, though plagued by self-doubt, I was far more fabulous than I thought myself to be. Those experiences, however painful, made me, well, me.

It all leaves me wondering "Is high school ever really over?" And where did this strange emotional phenomenon come from--this notion that someone is better than you because of who they were in high school. Or the car they drive. Or the size of their house. Or how talented they are. And why does this plaguing insecurity come around the corner and bite us every now and again?

Some part of me will never feel on equal footing with the "It Girls" if I came into a room with them. I'd probably blunder over my words, trying to prove to myself? To them? that I am every bit as good as they are. I hope one day soon I won't really care.