The following is an experiment. It is a joint blog, written by both myself (in the normal font) and my Queensland best friend, K, in the italicised font). I started the blog from a random thought in my head and where it ended was a fair way from where it began.


High school seems like a very long time ago to me and I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing considering that I am a teacher. Whenever I get together with my best friend from Queensland (who I have been friends with since year 10) we inevitably start to reminisce about things that happened at school or people that we remember. Generally I remember the people and the teachers, but I do not often remember the events and so usually these discussions remind me of things that I had long buried in my mind. I loved high school – everything about it. I loved the social side of school – spending ridiculous amounts of time with your friends – often more time than you spent at home with your family. I loved the challenge of school work and the feeling that you got when you solved a difficult problem or wrote the perfect essay (now I am kidding myself that there is such a thing) or finally understood something that had been baffling you for a long time. I loved the different personalities of my teachers, and I used to study them during class, spending so much time watching and listening to them that even the grumpy teachers or the shit ones or the ones who had no control over the class still managed to win their way into my good books.

In this I think we get to see the birth of Darce the teacher.

I also loved high school towards the end (and only towards the end) but for very different reasons. For me, in the beginning high school was a threatening and challenging place. It took me a long while to form friendships and to find my place. In fact it pretty much took me until year 12. This is why I was loving high school at the end and why I did not want to leave it. I had finally found my place, worked out where I fitted in the grand scheme of things and had decided that the ‘popular’ girls were actually no better off than I was. I think I can see both sides of the argument, I understand those who loved high school and never wanted to leave and I feel the pain of the others who never did find their place, who still feel victimized by their experiences and who would never go back there under any circumstances.

It is funny really. Funny how two best friends can have such a totally different experience of school. Funny but not surprising. I can remember my first day of high school , but for me it was a fairly easy transition – there were other people from my primary school in all of my classes and it did not take me long to make new friends. But I could always see that intimidation that people felt at the hands of the ‘popular girls’ those that we dubbed ‘california’ girls; the blonde, bimbo surfie type that sought out validation in all of the wrong places because they were actually really insecure. The type of person who puts down the ‘lesser’ of us out there in order to make themselves feel bigger and better. I was happy at school avoiding this type of person and making friends with everyone. I don’t now, and never did believe in being nasty to anyone and so I generally got along with everyone in the best way that I could.

I sometimes wonder how much of the ‘California girls’ nastiness was imagined and how much of it was real. But in this, I guess we also see the birth of K the Psychologist and the true meaning of popularity. You see, part of the reason that I realized that the ‘California girls’ were a farce was the fact that I could see Darce’s genuine popularity. It is something that I think likely still exists today and is something that Darce is blissfully ignorant of. People genuinely warmed to her and would stop to listen should she speak. She was well respected and well liked and never in my time as her best friend have I ever witnessed anyone be mad at her or bitch about her behind her back. It is sobering just how powerful the influence of high school can be on people’s lives.

It is also amusing to me to be told that no-one (to K’s knowledge) ever bitched about me behind my back because these days I seemed to be overly preoccupied with what people think about me (or what I think they think about me) and whilst I can see that this preoccupation is a waste of energy and perhaps even self-obsession, it is difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that generally people don’t really give a shit about the decisions you make (so long as they have no negative impact on others) and that perfect is a state of the imagination, not a real or attainable place. I used to be quite content in the knowledge that I was a good person and that people liked me, but I find myself questioning myself more now than I ever did before. Is it the increased scrutiny (or the feeling of increased scrutiny) that comes with having over 100 people watching you each day for 45 minutes each? Am I just a little more self-obsessed than I used to be?

There are two things that I want to point out here;

All people are inevitably self-obsessed. We actually aren’t given the gift of anyone else’s perspective therefore we are terminally doomed to only see things from inside our own heads. Often what this means is that people spend more time thinking about themselves and things that effect them than they do thinking about anyone else. Is this a bad thing? NO. It most definitely is not. It just means that often when we think that people are talking about us they aren’t even thinking about us at all and this in turn gives us an excellent reason to be a little less paranoid.
Given that Darce can only see things from inside her own head, the scrutiny and judgment from other people that she is concerned about is also occurring inside her own head. She has no firm idea whether people are actually talking about her and if they are even what they are saying. Does it even matter? Should our self worth be defined by others as it was for the ‘California’ girls or should our self worth be defined by ourselves?

Given this, I would then like to pose the following alternate hypothesis. That it is not other people who are creating this insecurity and anxiety but rather, Darce’s own insecurity regarding the extremely difficult choices she has had to make lately. It is only natural that after having to make such drastic changes to her life she would wonder if she did the right thing, if she has the ability to make sound decisions and if it was maybe something she did that lead to this situation.

True. The situation that I am in at the moment has made me more insecure because for the first time in my life I do worry about what people think because I do not have the security of going home to a partner who loves me and does not care about what other people think. Judging myself more harshly than anybody else does has always been something that I have been guilty of. So the main aim for me at the moment is to get myself to a stage where I am secure in myself and happy with myself. Perhaps that will take a healthy dose of self-obsession!