reminisce
and think about my transition from adolescence to adulthood. Or at least from my junior high years to high school. The writer in me came out. Enjoy.
It Mattered to Me: Defining my Adolescence
As a twelve year old girl, I was the Zebra with lime green stripes. It was as if I was born a part of my schoolmates’ herd but for some reason, I was given green stripes instead of white. I looked like the kids my age, as normal as any junior higher could be, and I talked like the kids my age, trying to act wiser beyond my years; but something kept me apart from them. I imagine it was the green stripes.
When I think about my transition from adolescence into adulthood, I cringe. Mainly because it was tough. Those stripes of mine, that difference, really defined me. But those different stripes were important to me. They mattered. From a young age my parents raised me in a church and my Christian faith was my heart. It distinctly set me on a different path then my peers; but it was a path that fashioned my adulthood. Because of my faith I have always looked at life a little differently then some of my peers and when I was an adolescent that difference had significance. I was the child who in fourth grade wrote an Easter essay saying what it really meant to me was about how Jesus was my friend. I did not look at Easter as finding colored eggs hidden in plastic grass, or as infinite supply of jelly beans. To me, it was about faith. A junior high girl just did not do things that differently in my school because if she did, then she was not labeled ‘cool.’ That was me, not cool.
As that junior high girl, new to the world of popularity, boys, and appearance, part of me wanted to give everything to fit it and be one of the girls who was “going out” with the captain of the basketball team. So I tried the best I knew how and that was to go out for every sport school offered and to quit being bookish. I tried cheerleading, volleyball, basketball, softball, and track and field. After all, anybody who was anybody played sports. Yet, none of those fit except track. This later turned out to be a defining point for me.
Yes, I loved playing sports but I didn’t come from a family with an important name so I did not get playing time. Instead, I sat the bench and watched while all the other girls got the glory and the guys. It affected me, my self-esteem a little but, but I knew in my faith that those things didn’t truly matter. It all related to Easter as a ten year old. After all that trial and error, I went back to what I was good at, just being me. That was accepting the things I did like, and that was school. Reading, writing, and learning was really who I was. I was the nerd. And even though it was tough to stand apart in junior high, I proudly admitted it and used it to the best of my ability by joining book club and scholastic bowl. That pursuit of knowledge was me. Different and me.
While junior high popularity was alive and kicking in the gym and on the field, youth group became the event of the week for me. I was having fun with my friends, playing crazy games, and soaking up the foundation of my faith. God became the one with the glory and I learned that as a Christian, the world was not always going to like me, but I was supposed to be different. Those lime green stripes were important after all. I grew in my faith and even though I ran with the book club and not the cheerleaders, I still ran. I turned to track because running was something that I did not have to do for others; I could do it for me and it was the strength I had in running that came from God. I ran in relays and worked on a team, but I knew I wasn’t running track just to be popular. I was running track because I loved it, because I had a strength inside.
I also learned that just because I did not date the guys on the basketball team, or because I was not a cheerleader, it didn’t make me any less cool. Popularity and the cool factor was something that went right out the door when people learned I was ‘the Christian.’ I was dubbed the good girl, but that did not define me. My faith did.
When I moved into high school I walked into a Serengeti of popularity and I really felt like my Zebra stripes stuck out. I waited for the lion to attack, but it never really came. I stuck with my faith and my running, my books, and my search for knowledge, and I let those things mold me into the adult I was becoming. Junior year I quite track to find a job and that is a decision that haunts me still today. It was a pivotal moment in my life because quitting was giving up a part of me that mattered. I stayed with book club, joined drama club, chess club, and worked on my academics, but running, though it wasn’t for the status of athlete and popularity, was something I had in my soul. It was somehow connected to my faith and I had lost it by quitting; all because I chose to move into adulthood by working. I had given up a childlike part of me.
Those lime green stripes were probably the best part of my transition from adolescence to adulthood because they gave me a reason to be different. Yes, I still looked like everybody else, but I could be my own person and let my passions create me. I was part of the mold, but I could make it my own and that is what I did. I made a few mistakes, but what girl doesn’t as she transitions? Luckily, when she becomes an adult, it isn’t always too late to find those things she lost. I found running again, not on a team, but in a way that it could still define me. I was a nerdy, faithful, running Zebra with lime green stripes in my adolescent years. I embraced every moment of it. Some days, I find those stripes still staring at the women in the mirror.
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