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Not a Trait

This I Believe

By Kendall M. FairlanePublished 6 years ago 13 min read
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Growing up homeschooled had its perks, I could sleep in, I had more time for my hobbies, and I was able to learn in a hands-on way. My mom was my teacher for a while. She sucked at teaching math, not being very good at it herself, but she was exceptional at history. Out of everything she taught me, I remember history lessons the most. I used to read history books about ancient Greece and Rome in my free time, admiring the strength of their generals and most infamous leaders, longing to be like them.

At the age of seven or eight (however old you are when you go into fourth grade), my mom told me that I would be going to a program called MP3. Basically, this program was a private school for homeschoolers, it was so small that they didn’t divide the classes by grades. You had first through fourth, fourth through sixth, and sixth through eighth. It only ran on Mondays and Wednesdays, so it didn’t cut into my home-schedule too much. I don’t remember my first day that well. All I remember from that first year was that the girls in my fourth through sixth grade english class always gave me questionable looks when I answered a question, that expression that screamed, “Are you stupid?” Even if I was right, I felt wrong. The boys in my ancient Roman history class laughed uncontrollably when the teacher asked what Vesta was the goddess of and I had innocently replied with “fertility” when it was actually “family” (close enough though, right? I sure thought so). From those two moments, I always feared answering questions in class. I feared everything from those moments, terrified someone would judge or criticize me for me.

Around this time, my mom also put us in “Co-op” which ran every Friday. It was a mom-run educational and religious centered program for homeschoolers. I still remember how tucked away the church was in a neighborhood of elderly people. I remember the light blue paint with the black roof, how the building looked like a teapot, short and stout. I remember how the atmosphere inside didn’t make me feel safe, it felt crowded and suffocating despite the wide hallways and the open space of the sermon hall. It was like I held my breath for the entire day, watching over my shoulder in paranoia. I remember it all a little too well.

The kids were expected to help set up chairs for sermon upon arrival while the moms seemed to disappear to chat with each other. Us kids would race to the giant noteboard to see what family was in charge of prayer and the pledge of allegiance that day, some out of innocent excitement, and some out of dread, like me. Then we would disperse to talk to our friends until a bell was rang, signifying that it was time for sermon. I don’t mean a typical school bell, I meant an actual, hand-held bell. We weren’t allowed to sit with our friends during sermon, but mine found ways to bend the rules. After sermon, we would head to our first class, followed by lunch, recess and ending the day with a second class. The classes were mostly electives, it was whatever the moms felt like teaching. I remember taking a class on etiquette from a mom with a thick country accent. I took a class on horses, one on dogs, and so many more weird ones. I wish they had a class on confidence, but even then I don’t think I would have taken it. When you finished eighth grade, you got a graduation ceremony into high school, with a graduation video, prayer and speech all prepared by your parents.

By sixth grade, I hated both my home-schooling groups. I didn’t really have a good reason, but my best guess was that there weren’t a lot of class choices that were up my alley and although I was home-schooled, that didn’t stop me from hating school too. I wanted to be in public school like my friends from my church. They all had so many friends and knew so much more than I did; knowing how to crack the perfect joke and how to make everyone in the room smile or laugh, they knew something I just couldn’t quite grasp, it was some social idea that I couldn’t learn at home. My mom claimed that homeschooling made me smarter than public school kids, but I felt like I fit into the typical home-school kid stigma that public school kids assumed of us; awkward in every way, know-it-all’s, and nerdy.

In eighth grade, I snapped. I stalled going to school, I kept my grades up, but I hated every minute of school, especially Co-op, I hated that one the most. Everyone seemed so blind, so sheltered, so awkward, they seemed brainwashed and all shared the same personality, and I wanted nothing to do with it, I refused to fit into their mold. I argued with my parents about public school constantly, they told me I could go once I was a freshman to shut me up for a while, and it worked. I remember my first day of freshman year at my local high school. I remember getting lost, pacing the campus strip outside the main doors back and forth a million times, because I couldn’t find the entryway around the building to the portable where my first period class was that was shown to me in a tour. I remember the smell of weed, the ragged kids with their snapback hats and emo-punk appearances. I remember sitting alone during lunch for the first week because I didn’t know anyone and I still remember the looks I got from groups of strangers, wondering why I was alone. A month into my first year, I made plenty of friends, more than I ever had during homeschooling. I was more of a listener, no matter what group I went to, even with the quiet kids I was the quiet one. I laughed at people’s jokes, wishing it was me who thought of that. I listened to people’s crazy stories, wishing I had something just as cool to offer to the conversation. I felt envy all the time, I wanted to be able to join in on conversations in my class without needing an invitation, but I had nothing to add to the conversation, nor the courage to say anything. I didn’t know how to interact like these people did, and I felt left out constantly with no way in. All I had was a crazy backstory about crazy homeschool groups that force-fed me religion like it was nothing, as if it were meant to shape my character when in reality it was suffocating me, making me choke on it and spitting it back out, leaving me as an anxious child with no self-worth or esteem. I adjusted well into public school, I made memories, I made lots of friends, and now I have a few crazy stories of my own that I always wished I had back then, but the fear that encased my comfort zone, lingered all the same.

I moved to Idaho from Washington after my freshman year, right after I had adjusted so well into public school with my new friends that I now had to leave behind. It felt like my parents wanted to shake up my life any way possible. The worst part was that it seemed like we were moving on a whim, “to be closer to family and because God told us to” my parents explained. I held onto the family part much more than the God part, but even then it seemed kind of dumb, I hadn’t been that close to extended family since I was a toddler, and my cousins wouldn’t look at me, let alone talk to me, I felt undeserving around them, why would I want to move to be closer to that kind of family? I remember my first couple days at my new school pretty vividly, I still remember some of the faces in my classes, and if they remember me, I want to apologize for those first couple months of sophomore year. I was a closed-off, still socially-awkward and angry kid. Most of all I was terrified. I think, deep inside, I was scared of a fresh start. It meant being vulnerable again, it meant having to muster the courage to be myself all over again, whoever I thought that was. I resented the fact we had moved here. I held onto the hope we would go back to Washington after my parents saw how miserable my siblings and I were. That didn’t happen. My parents put my siblings in public school, which didn’t help my anger anymore, my siblings would have those experiences of elementary and middle school in the public education system and I never would, they didn’t have to deal with that awkward freshman year that I did. My siblings didn’t even ask to be in public school, but they got what I had wanted so badly growing up, just like that.

Despite wanting to be cold and heartless, my desire to connect with someone and make a friend was stronger. I remember the moment I met my best friend, she was the most scared of me. You could see the fear in her eyes spread through her whole body as her they widened and she slowly—as if to not set me off—would turn her head to look elsewhere. Her. I decided. She is going to be my first friend.

Turns out, she had just moved here from Montana and was just as new as I was. She was shy, like me. She loved to write, like me. She was creative, like me. She was innocent, like me. She was even a little awkward despite being public schooled her whole life. She became my best friend, and continues to be to this day. I made a lot of friends again, and I adjusted again. But I still felt like I couldn’t enter into conversations and offer something. I didn’t have the confidence for it. It felt like that for the next two years. I stuck my toe out of my comfort zone, testing the waters and then drawing back into my known security bubble that was beginning to lose it's usual roominess, I was growing too big for it and I knew it. I made new friends, but like before, I still listened to them, occasionally offering a sarcastic comment and receiving a few laughs here and there. I was usually just somebody’s ride through school, always letting people copy my homework hoping they would see me as a friend. But how would I know any better after only one year of public school under my belt?

The summer before junior year, I had a group of three friends, including myself. We hung out every other day in the summer, one of them was super outgoing and impulsive, which made for some great adventures that pushed me out of my comfort zone, like Haunted World. My best friend, cautious and thoughtful, made sure plans were made ahead of time to keep us on track. Me? I was along for the ride.

Junior year, I got my first job at a movie theater, and that job required that I call customers over, talking to strangers, and standing up for myself to my selfish boss. Needless to say, my confidence has skyrocketed in comparison to my previous years. I quit that job shortly before senior year, knowing it would be a tough year. I was ready to accept my title as a senior, ready to watch freshman look at me with those wide eyes, much like I had as a freshman. I also decided I wasn’t going to take bull from anyone that year, not wanting to be someone’s ride through school. I remember sitting in my english class, looking around at the classmates, the two boys next to me had leaned over onto my desk to talk to each other, acting like I was invisible. Another one shot me some kind of pity-smile, I knew she would copy my homework all year like she had the last two years. No. I decided. I wasn’t going to deal with a rowdy english class and pity from old friends, not this year. I switched into Intro to College Literature, knowing I should at least try to challenge myself this year, and because one of my old co-workers who graduated a couple years earlier told me I have to take the class.

As all my classmates know and have experienced firsthand, senior year was a challenge indeed. The first day for me in that class after my schedule was revised, we annotated a paper about high school. I remember on the front it was all cute, happy, and nostalgic. Then you flipped it over and it was basically hitting you with a baseball bat of dread to finish senior year, at least for me it did. The words are still clear in my head, or at least the overall message I got from it.

"Did you do everything you said you would in high school?"

No. I hadn’t.

"Did you even try to talk to that girl you have always liked?"

No, I hadn’t.

"Did you make enough memories to remember high school?"

No, I didn’t.

That was it for me. The moment I decided to try. The moment I decided to dive out of my comfort zone that was now suffocating me much like homeschooling had before.

A memory popped into my head after reading this. My grandma has this obsession with movies, and anytime she visited us in Washington, she brought her top ten new favorites for us to watch with her. One of them when I was 11 or 12, was We Bought A Zoo. There’s a scene in the movie that has since then been ingrained in my mind. “Twenty seconds of insane courage, and I swear something great will come from it,” he said. I remember at that age, being so inspired by that small speech about bravery, confidence, and courage.

“I wish I could do that,” I remember thinking.

Sitting in my desk, replaying that moment in my head, something clicked.

Why couldn’t I?

What was stopping me?

I could almost see 11-year-old me, staring at me, waiting for something to happen. At that age, I had so many dreams and visions of my future, but had I done them? Not yet. I hadn’t made that kid proud, she looked bored, ready to give up on her future but thinking “maybe this year it will be better.” I wouldn’t let her down this year.

I went to more football games, despite my lack of knowledge, I even sat in the student section and caught onto all the traditional cheers. I never arrived early enough to sit with my class though, as hard as I tried.

I talked to that girl I liked, even though we hadn’t had a class together since my first year there. I still try when I see an opportunity, even though nothing besides some small talk and genuine smiles to each other in the hallways has come of it, I have built my confidence to the point where I wouldn’t ever have to think, “What if I had tried?

Eventually, I was trying new things left and right. (Nothing illegal, to ease your mind.) I was constantly nudging at the edge of my comfort zone, I stretched it, lived at the edge of it. Now, I don’t think I have much of a comfort zone anymore. In the future, I want to go skydiving, surfing, travel to places I’ve always wanted to see, keep talking to strangers. I want to try.

It took pretty much all 17 years for me to learn this, because I always thought people were born confident and outgoing. Granted, some are. I wasn’t, obviously. Feeling inadequate and wondering how people came to be so popular and fearless. All it took was 20 seconds of courage to create myself into who I was meant to be.

Confidence is a habit, not a trait. This I believe.

happiness
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