If I had to say it all in one sentence, I would say I felt alone, misunderstood, and not like other kids. Looking back now, I think things were bad, but I think I saw them as worse than what they were. I didn't appreciate the friends that I had, and my own neglect of my friends (not calling them up on phone, etc, because I'd rather be reading a book) made it difficult for those friendships to deepen to the levels I wanted.
I may have excluded potential friends. I was always, always nice to kids who were the odd man out, but that doesn't mean I felt that they were on "my level."
For example, I longed, LONGED, to be loved by a boy. And indeed there was a an INFP guy who fell hard for me, and even wrote a poem about me and published it in the school newspaper. But he used to HISS at people who teased him. That made me put him into the "pity" category, rather than the "interest" category. I even went out with him, but it was incredibly awkward. I feel bad about the whole thing because that poem was the single most romantic gift I EVER got from a guy in my entire life (and I'm 55 years old now). I wonder now if I passed up the opportunity for true love because I wrote him off as odd and immature.
High school was better than Junior High. In High School there were just more kids, so I could find groups that were more accepting of my ideosyncracies. I hung out with the choir (artsy fartsy types relish in being different) and with the gifted kids (who met together for lunch). But I'd feel alone because even though no one said, "Go away, you don't belong you freak" like they did in junior high, at the same time, no one said, "Hey there! Come over here and sit by me!"
The best thing that I did in High School was when I, along with my friend, opened up a local chapter of the Tolkien Fellowships. It did a lot for my self esteem that some how, some way, it was a success, that I ended up getting quoted in the county newspaper, invited to the invitation only premiere of Bakshi's Lord of the Rings and stuff. But what REALLY mattered most was that it introduced me to a select number of people who shared my interest in Tolkien and who were amazingly like me, personality-wise. I made lifelong friends from that group.
And finally, in high school I began my spiritual quest, a quest which has continued most of my life. A quest for meaning, for beauty, for truth, for all that is good. In me, the archetypes of the mystic, the seeker, and the sage interplay. At age 16 I realized that although I was happy in my religious upbringing, I had been highly sheltered, and I asked my father to take me around to the other denominations. It was also the first time that I visited worship services of religions outside my faith. “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.â€
But whatever High School was like objectively, I experienced it as very, VERY painful. Make no mistake; there was a lot of depression. I retreated a lot into books. One of my most interesting memories is on the very last day of my senior year, signing someone's year book, wondering to myself if I would whitewash these memories, or if I would remember just how bad it really was.
