Looking back on the past three years of high school, I can’t help but feel manipulated. It seems to be a theme of my life that I’ve only recently broken.
My phone’s gone off twice in the past hour. I usually like the song E-Pro, but I only get a sinking feeling when I look at the number. It’s not in my contacts, but I know who it is. It’s someone who I honestly just don’t want to talk to.
Freshman year completely changed me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was in with the absolute wrong crowd. Reprehensible people with no moral compass. Narcissistic teenagers who fed on masculinity, cynicism and drugs. However, I was too caught up in the thrill of actually having friends to even realize who I was associating with. For most of my short life, I’ve been an outcast. Prior to high school, I had the slightest bit of social skill. I was the quiet one, who didn’t talk in class. Save for a few strong friendships over the years, I never branched out into wider groups. I remember the summer of 2010, which I spent clacking away on a plastic drum kit, playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I don’t think I went to a single person’s house that entire three month span. The number of times I actually talked to other people (and the number of people I talked to) could probably be measured on one hand.
So it was with little resistance that I took the first opportunity to join a new social circle during 9th grade. Basically no resistance, really. The drugs didn’t phase me. Neither did the cheating, or the bullying. None of the animosity and peer pressure directed at me ever really crossed my mind. They picked apart my personality and found everything that was wrong with who I was. Over the course of two years, they tried to engineer me to conform to their standards. They openly derided my characteristics. I didn’t dress “cool” enough. I had a bad sense of humor. I was too focused on school. I didn’t smoke. I wasn’t hell-bent on losing my virginity. I didn’t like engaging in illegal things, or risky things.
The person who called me today was a member of that group. He manipulated me, used me to advance his own goals. I helped him with school – hell, I did some of his fucking assignments. I ran around and did things for him. He disappeared in September 2011, shipped off to a rehab facility by his parents, who had discovered his smoking habit. I didn’t hear from him for an eternity.
Now he wants to be friends again. Thankfully I’ve left that idiotic group. I’m not looking to associate with anybody of their like, ever again. I’ve gone a long way to surround myself with positive people, especially my amazing girlfriend. Never before have I realized what truly good, moral people are like.
But at the same time I can’t help but feel bad that I’m making an assumption that, after all this time, he hasn’t changed too. Do people really change? I can’t discern whether he has. I can’t stand that past chunk of my life. The disappointment I have in myself is through the roof for not recognizing the degenerates who I not only tolerated, but allowed to change me. Life doesn’t deal second chances. I don’t think I will.
Alternate Amnesiac 