Highschool is rough. It’s like suddenly. . .things get real. Peer pressure doubles, maybe even triples, friends turn into strangers, we fall in and out of love, and we make some of the most important decisions in our life. Since I started high school, it’s been a constant tornado juggling all of those things. Do you remember in elementary school when peer pressure wasn’t drugs, vaping, or sex? It was being dared to go backwards on the slide at the park and try not to get hurt. The worst things close friends could do was not include you in the game at recess. Love wasn’t complicated, or a concept we even understood, it was silly crushes and “check YES or NO”. The hardest decisions were which friend group to play with that day, who to sit with at lunch, or choose a Roblox username that wasn’t already taken. Long story short, as you grow up things get more and more real. Will we make mistakes? Yes. Do they define us? No; even though we may think so in the moment. I’ve had my fair share of mistakes. But what I’ve learned, what I HAD to learn to move on, was that I couldn’t let mistakes define me. I had to stop blaming myself. Because the past is in the past. . .I know that saying is very overused and cliché, but think about it; what good does it do us? If we’re always looking behind us, we can’t move forward because we might trip. As portrayed in all the action movies, we have to keep our eyes ahead and not look back at the explosion behind us. Learning to forgive yourself is the key. Accepting that what’s done is done. It’s what you do with the knowledge of your past that counts. Will you learn from it? What will you take from it? What can you use from it in your days to come? Lot’s of things come with age, life will challenge us, and we will have some of the best and/or worst things to embrace or conquer. So live life, have fun, because you won’t be in the moment you are in forever. Forgive yourself so you can move on. Learn so you don’t repeat. And one day, you will look back and be so proud of yourself. Because if we be real, life is not some fairy tale. But we can definitely make magic out of pixy dust.
