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| Articles: Growing Up |
Posted by
SindelChaos on Tuesday, January 07, 2003 - 04:10 AM PST
You know, I just turned sixteen and I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I was made the person I am today. The flaws in my life and the changes I could have made is just the beginning. I really have been thinking about the last couple of years and the way I have lived through my experiences. I remember the first day I came to school wearing all black beginning my change phase(too early I later realized) *walks into time machine and the world blurs*
8th grade
I walked down the halls in black make up, black fingernail polish, black clothes, and dyed black hair. People gawked at me. They started with the devil worshipper comments.
Me: "NO, I'M GOTHIC"
What the hell was I "The Prodigy"? Apparently because they got to see the usual 'babygoth' high school goth that most see and most stereotype. What we like to call the metalhead child. Yeah, I was pissed at the world and I listened to angry, angry music. I wore my black duster with the little holes made in it for summer and winter wear over almost all my clothes. 7 months of that, and I was sick of it. I just wasn't all that angry. Sure, all these people liked to flock in their own herds and make fun of little people and stuff like that. Either they were getting over it or I was accepting it.
9th grade
Multicolored lipstick, black eyeliner, black fingernail polish, black hair, and semi colored clothing. I stopped wearing my duster as often. By winter of that year, dusters were the "in" thing at my school. I got rid of most the angry music. I opened up to real gothic music and went back to my elementary love, classical. My happiness or I thought at the time came to my town but, it turned out being my biggest enemy......HOT TOPIC.
At first, it was cool. Then, I came to my school and I saw something so horrific. I thought I'd rather die than stay. To my left, girl wearing black lipstick and fingernail polish, to my right, cheap renaissance clothes, to my front all the little metal heads thriving in their new Ozzy clothes talking about how gothic they were. I almost fainted. They had become what I had just gotten over. A plague had hit my school. I then learned a very important lesson. I wasn't being me. Well, I was in a way but, I let myself go to the point that I wasn't doing some things I really enjoyed doing anymore. I had to become the Sarah I am, instead of Sarah the cold-hearted "goth." From then on, labels meant shit to me. I still use the terms but, they don't mean the same to me as some do. I mean, every soup can has a label or you wouldn't know what tin can was which flavor.
10th grade
Mostly red lipstick multicolored going with certain outfits, multicolored eyeliner and shadows, multicolored fingernail polish, black hair, and multicolored clothes. I am pissed again at the world but, then again, its sort of my fault. I didn’t do all my homework and this is what it got me. Raving idiots. I walked down the hall one day wearing orange lipstick and a neon dress with black polyester pants under it. Some people liked it but, as for the "serious hot topic shoppers" I had become a 'poseur'. I didn't care of course. The next month, I see all these popular girls running around with pants under their dresses. Double take on that one. I guess I have become a trendsetter and it annoys the fuck out of me. People treat me like shit and then steal what I wear...
I wonder what 11th grade is going to be like?
Which brings me to this conclusion. We can't really be different. We are ALL the same there is no hiding it. We are white, brown, black, red, yellow or a mix. We either have long, short, medium, wavy, curly, straight, frizzy, or fried hair and if not those we are buzz cut or shaved. We are female, male, or hermaphrodite. We breathe oxygen, we shit, we piss, we may do this in different ways but we do it all the same. We are either dead or alive. The only way someone is truly different is if they have three eyes, four legs, and one tit or something to that effect and even then, those people are known as freaks or cripples. You can't have an original thought because no thought is truly original. There have been so many people living on this planet and have thought so many things, everything was thought of 12 centuries ago. Now whether those thoughts were carried out, is a different story. No thought is original. It makes me wish I was living back in the caveman era. Hell yeah, that would be cool to have a thought back then.
So in closing, people suck, no thought is original, so be happy you are human.
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| Growing Up | Login/Create an account | 25 Comments |
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Re: Growing Up
by Xaoswolf (Xaoswolfathotmaildotcom)
on Jan 07, 2003 - 09:22 AM
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You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Growing up sucks, people suck, hot topic sucks.
My first year at college, some of the metal heads in my class asked me if I liked Cradle of Filth, when I said that I never listened to them, one said that they were the most gothic metal band around, they also couldn't believe that I had never been in a Hot Topic. Well, a few years later, I still never listened to Cradle of Filth, and I still haven't bought anything in a hot topic.
And you'll find that no matter what you do, if you are the first to do it, they'll hate you for it, then they'll start doing it, of course by then, you'll have moved on to different things, which in turn they'll hate you for. Best I can say, is just do what you want to do, have fun, and make the most of the time you spend there.
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Being special
by Arthegarn on Jan 07, 2003 - 05:32 PM
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I try to imagine what would I have done if I had had someone like you as my classmate 14 or 12 years ago. Well I'd probably have found you intriguing, tried to talk to you and then left for my books as all nerds are cursed to do, and I was as nerd as they come.
It's curious, sometimes I wonder if I'm growing up at all. I am an enfant terrible and always will be. When I was 18 I went to the university wearing a tie and a jacket and carrying a suitcase just because I was supposed to do anything other than that. I was supposed to be rebel and non-conformist. Well, eat my shorts. Now I am a lawyer and teach college students and now I take every excuse to dress as a goth in public (even on court once, I really should post that pic). Perhaps I misguided my career, I should have been a clown...
But I don't share your conclussion. We are NOT all the same. This fine site is a proof of it. The point is that if we try to copy those who are different from us by their appareance we'll just look different but not be different.
Ortega y Gasset (my favourite philosopher) said almost a century ago that differences are desirable as long as they make a person better. He called these people who had a characteristic that made them different (in the better sense of the word) elite. "Sometimes we hear an idea so finelly expressed, a feeling so purely felt, a gesture so properly made that it grows within us the desire to make ours that idea, to feel that feeling, to own that gesture. not just to imitate it, but to make it ours, to be the person able to make such a thing that caused such an impression on us". The idea behind that paragraph is that mimicking what others do is a primitive way to try to improve ourselves and, as it's primitive and relies in the surface, it fails. And with that failure comes a subjective impression that, just because one was mimicking and posing. the other was also posing.
Perhaps as I grew up I started seeing what was in reality that I admired in the people I admired and tried to make that, and only that, mine. When you don't try to be someone else and just try to be yourself, a little more polished, then you are starting to be special.
Because really special people are always themselves.
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Re: Growing Up
by feralucce on Jan 07, 2003 - 05:55 PM
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you make a classic blunder in your first paragraph...your life is not flawed... it just is... not perfect... not flawed... iut just exists....
I've never called a babybat a metalhead child... WE all evolve differently... reading what you have written... I am corious... why do you have to be different.. it horrified you that they all liked it? Screw trying to be different... just be yourself...
-also-
I take offense at being called human...
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Re: Growing Up
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on Jan 09, 2003 - 02:20 AM
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happy birthday sindel :)
Lots of truth to what you've said, yes dear yes.
"growing up" is one of the bloodiest, messiest, terrifying, and confusing things on this earth. It's not supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be in essence a school of Hard Knocks to prepare you for the pummeling of life after public education. They are not the best years of your life, but can be the most interesting.
You couldn't PAY me to do it again, even if I could make it however I wanted. Never in a million years. Nope, no way.
It's hard to grasp those around you and their actions and behaviors, because like each of us, they live in their own perception of the world and how it works. They, like we do, find like minded individuals (or people they WANT to be like-minded with for whatever reasons) and go from there. It's the best you can do...learn to survive on your own, or survive in a small herd.
I can look back in my highschool anual (oh cripes it's bad, believe me) and not even recognize myself, who I was, nor do I even KNOW what made me like the people I hung out with (I think I figured saftey in numbers...more decoys so as I could make an easier escape). I haven't spoken to a single one of them after leaving school early and heading to college. I left and well, that was that.
Even tho the years between school age and "adulthood" are rather short, they are huge, and in two years you won't even recognize who you were back then. Four years and ugh....you don't stop growing when you think you've finally got it figured out. It does a loopdeeloo and you start from point 0 again, but with a few more notches in your lipstick case and some knowhow to make it less traumatic.
As for everyone being the same, yes and no.
Yes, we all are human, have thumbs, thinking capacity, strive for some sort of satisfaction with ourselves and our lives, iron out our personal identities, have goals and dreams of our very own.
But very different because those goals and dreams and personal identies and such are our own, nobody else's, personal. Our ways of thinking on certain items, our likes and dislikes, all are individual from our individual experiences, and yes, even the members of the "herd", tho not always obvious, all have their own personal dreams and identies whether they are strong enough to voice them or follow them.
I've run into SEVERAL of my old classmates from years ago, and some are the same and always will be, and some have changed, "grown up", or finally just "got it". Some I never spoke to, or never wanted to speak to me, but running into me, for them, was like running into an old friend, someone to remember "the days" with, even tho I was rarely a part of it. Eager to talk, eager to listen, and eager to meet and do it again sometime, maybe over coffee, or a drink, whenever is good for you, here's my number, we should get together and catch up.
I think my turning point in "growing up" came from meeting these people, the very banes of my existence from years ago....and realizing that I'm not the only one that changed. Realizing that they had experiences of their own, tragedies and triumphs and exploits, and that they've gotten over old social barriers and bullshit, and just want to share them with a familiar face.
There's a lot more to growing up than realising that you "have"...it's realising and accepting that others have too. It's realising that others have dropped the bullshit, and that perhaps we have our own bullshit to drop too.
It's a tall order.
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Re: Growing Up
by Anya on Jan 19, 2003 - 12:49 AM
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We all have our "original" qualities that separate us from everyone else, but I do agree - nothing is completely original.
An artist can become the next Picasso, but something must have inspired his works. No matter how creative or different some of us try to pose as, it all comes down to that no one is 100% original, 100% perfect, or 100% good or evil (not to say there is no good or evil, but that black and white term sometimes tampers with my patience).
I use to be a poseur myself. During my childhood (not sure if it's a typical trait or not among people) I use to try to fit in. I'd try to act hyperactive (but not to say I cannot do that being myself) and myself when depressed and tried to go with the typical trends, but when I hit...say...13 or so, I didn't feel right and accepted the fact that I have flaws myself. It somewhat added to my sociopathic side for I wasn't conforming to the "common trend", but I am who I am despite what other people say or think. There's likely some people out there walking in my shoes...*shrugs*
One thing some people fail to understand is it's "who" and not "what." When I see people making comments like "Damn Muslims and ragheads - they should all die!", it makes me frown. If I was anymore blunt, I would have said, "I hate to break it up to you, buddy, but there's just as much Americans committing atrocity as there are Arabians."
So en conclucion, no one is the same as everyone else, but at the same time, no one is totally different from everyone else. Even if the "most accurate" tests define you as one of the 1% of the world population, there's still those who are on the same boat...if that test is correct at all.
(Forgive me if I made this comment a tad long-winded, but I thought Sindel brought up a good point.)
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