The Drop Out
Not your mamas redemption story
Why do I always feel like I’m in trouble?
Why do I always feel like I am just a moment away from everything I’ve worked for being taken away, from everyone finding out I’m a sham, from everyone finally realizing I don’t belong like they do?
What do our younger selves have to teach us?
This week I’ve been busy writing essays and applying for graduate school. It’s too early to speak on the details publicly, and I won’t find out about acceptance until March, but needless to say I am deeply excited for this next chapter.
The essays required for admission have been pushing me to reflect on not only who I am now, but who I used to be, and how I arrived at this place, this moment where I find myself asking for acceptance into a school of my dreams. It’s made me want to tell you a quick story and share some reflections.
When I was 17, I slid my finger through the stiff white paper of an envelope from All State Insurance Company,
and found out that I was a high school drop out.
Yeah, you read that right. But we’ll get to how the hell that is possible in a second.
It was 2007, my senior year of high school, and I’d missed almost half of the year. I can’t even really tell you what I was doing during most of those days I skipped. I often call that time in my life “the lost years.” That era is a fast chaotic blur in my memory, fogginess that I guarantee is a survival mechanism I’m grateful for. Most of what I do remember is more of a feeling than a collection of moments. That time held an over arching, all consuming, aching itchiness in it. A need to stay as far away from my stressful, tumultuous home as I could, no matter where that meant I ended up. When I was home, I was constantly on high alert for the signs of the next violent outburst from my step dad. My mom’s health was slowly deteriorating and I was being met with the reality that no matter my pleas, she would never leave his abuse. My home life was paired with a need to stay as far away from school as I could too. I’d been getting bullied about everything from my body, to my off brand clothes, to my perceived promiscuity since about 7th grade, and I had to bring that hyper vigilance from home right into the classroom with me.
When I’d actually gather the courage to show up to school, I was met with stares from other students, bullying, whispers, awkwardness, and anger from my teachers. Of course the students were weird to me. I mean where was I all the time? Who was that weird ass girl with the sick mom that never came to school? Why couldn’t I just be normal? And the teachers, well, if there are moments I do remember, it’s the frustration and disappointment I received from over-worked, under-paid teachers who wrote me off as another fuck up that would never amount to anything. Instead of being asked what was going on, why I wasn’t showing up, if everything was okay, I was met with hostility, shame and judgement from them, all while other students looked on and laughed. It was a positive feedback loop of ostracization that did nothing but make it harder and harder to show my face.
I think most, including my teachers, would guess I was skipping school to party, to get high, to fuck other fuck ups. And I mean sure, there was some of all of that. House parties, sneaking out, black outs, terrible teenager sex, stealing (and getting caught). I shudder when I think back to some of it. Especially the grown men that found a lost 17 year old so enticing. But that’s for another story.
Though the majority of my blurry memories from that era of my life are me just driving around, alone. I remember sitting in the back of parking lots, napping in parks. I remember the green of open fields wooshing by my windows as I killed the time, hiding from everyone. I’d leave my house in the morning so my mom would think I was in school. I was always “staying with a friend” at night. The day or two a week I’d go to school, I’d explain my absence by saying I was “sick” and giving no other explanation. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen, I just knew I couldn’t face any of it. I knew it all felt too big and I felt too small. I knew I was too sensitive to bear any of it.
All I wanted was to be good.
And instead, the only way I knew to cope meant I was always, always “bad.”
After months of this, I was sent to the school’s guidance counselor once. I remember her clearly. A blonde, stiff, cold woman. Her daughter was the valedictorian, captain of the cheerleading squad I’d quit because of the bullying. She was everything I wasn’t. The counselor brought me into her dingy office and robotically asked me why I’d missed so many days. I opened up. I told her about the abuse at home, that my mom was sick and sometimes asked me to stay home to help her, how I’d often lie to stay away from home because the environment was so rough.
It’s funny how our brains work, because despite the blur- the things I do remember are seared in intense detail. It’s almost like I floated through that time in my life not truly touching reality as often as I could manage to avoid it- causing the blur blur blur-
only to be jolted into it abruptly by the weight of some moments. And those are the ones I can see as if I am still right there. The moments I can still smell. The moments I can tell you what people were wearing, what the light looked like.
I remember sharing my issues with the counselor, the only person I’d opened up to, hoping she would help me in some way. I remember her nodding, sighing, and then saying,
“I understand that all that must be hard for you. But ya know, there are so many students that have it worse. Some of your peers don’t have heat in their house, or their parents even have HIV. And they still manage to come to school.”
Shame overwhelmed me.
After that meeting I started showing up even less, then not at all. No one reached out to my parents. Did anyone even notice?
A few weeks passed and one day my mom handed me a letter from my car insurance company. Not thinking much, I slid my finger through the paper and pulled the letter out. It informed me that since I was a high school drop out, I was now unable to have car insurance until I turned 18. My heart sank and I began to panic.
But I hadn’t actually dropped out? I was a drop out? What did this mean? Didn’t you have to actually try to drop out? Sign something? Wouldn’t they tell my parents first? Wouldn’t someone try to stop this? How was this happening? And that’s how I found out that your guidance counselor can drop you out of school on your behalf as a minor if you stop showing up. No questions asked.
I became a statistic in an instant.
I missed graduation. Everyone I’d known since second grade graduated without me. I had so much shame. So much hopelessness. I thought I’d ruined my life. I started to lie to everyone. I told those who asked that I chose to leave. I chose to drop out. I wanted to go to another school. I wanted to take a break and graduate late. The adults in my life didn’t really care to ask many questions.
If I wanted to finish, it would be up to me to get a GED, or re-enroll the coming August back into high school. I chose to re-enroll. I showed up the first day of the next year, with my entire class gone, off starting their lives. I took about ten steps into the building before I turned around, got in my car, and drove to another high school in my county about thirty minutes away. I enrolled myself in the last classes I needed to graduate, and finished up that December. I thought I’d never get into any college with my grades. I was told there was no hope and I believed it. Thankfully I was very very wrong.
When applying to Cornell a decade later, they were the only school to ask for a high school transcript. Since I eventually went to community college before going to a four year school, the universities overall didn’t require a high school transcript because by that point it was irrelevant. Except Cornell. They needed the whole story. When I ordered my high school transcript, I remember the wave of memories and shame coming to me when I saw the grades- and most of all the absences. The lost years. In my last year of my senior year of high school out of 180 days, I missed 92 of them. I remember it being bad, but damn. There was the proof. I had to explain to Cornell what happened. It was hard but I was honest.
And, oh, I got in.
Despite how hard and ugly that chapter was in my life, I have no conscious shame around my choices. In fact, I feel proud of that girl for how she survived in so many ways. I feel understanding about why she did what she did. And I love her for how she got through it. I want to tell all of her stories in detail. It’s wild that I survived some of it.
Yet underneath it all there lives a hungry ghost. The time in my life created a story that I am not good enough, that I am lazy, that I am unworthy, that I am too hard to handle, that I am a problem to be solved. It’s muscle memory. It’s a neural pathway that is practiced and worn in. It lives underneath the face of the confident, brave woman I’ve become and seeps itself up in my relationships, my self perception, my professional life.
It’s the pathway that keeps me playing the role of the “good girl.” The pathway that told me that in order to fix the mess, in order to be safe, loved, chosen, valued, I must behave. I must be sweet. I must be perfect.
Fuck that.
I’ve started to realize that in order to keep this image of the good girl alive, this value I have that no matter who hurts me, I still strive for peace, always offer grace- it means I also have to lie. Offering people grace who don’t deserve it puts me out of integrity. Not telling my full story puts me out of integrity. And I desire integrity over almost all else. I am a deeply good person- but that does not mean I have to be a perfect person.
This next chapter of my life is all about nurturing and loving that scrappy little girl who got me through. It’s about owning my mistakes. Owning my imperfections. Owning the very things that were supposed to shame me into submission.
Everybody loves a redemption story. The story of the dropout who got her life together, traveled the world, went back to school on a full scholarship, and lived her dreams. And that is my story.
But there’s a whole lot more underneath that shiny image.
And I can promise you the messy parts are way more interesting.
One of the songs that always brings me back to aimlessly driving around country roads in NC:
Reflections:
Do you have any stories about yourself that you were taught when you were small?
Do you have a secret inner “fuck up” that you are waiting for people to discover?
Do you feel like you have to be perfect to be loved?
Do you feel like you always have to be the bigger person, forgive, be soft, be understanding, be gracious to be “good”?
If you are normally a “good girl” who always keeps the peace, who would it feel good to tell how you really feel?
Who needs to be told to fuck off? :)
Thank you so much for being here. I hope you got something from this share. As always, feel free to respond to this email if anything resonated. I love you all.
Brought back so many memories of my time at highschool and the weird chaotic and dangerous feeling of freedom. How what you're doing those years and the decisions you make can be somehow fuck up the rest of your life. We were brand new to freedom! It shouldn't have been like that. I got like 20 speeding tickets before I was 19. I didn't know how that would impact me for another decade.
My school also thought I dropped out. And to think it was happening to both of us nearly at the same time, I graduated in 2006. I wish we had each other back then.
My immediate reaction was, "I love you." Something that exhausted me when I was pursuing a different career path was how everyone only cared about numbers and the superficial experiences. I always wanted to hear about my peers' lives, to share my own, and feel how we're all humans hoping to grow and make meaningful changes. Thank you for sharing who you are and changing me in a meaningful way.