Don’t let them grind you down
The eighth-grade dance is coming up. You know what that means right?
A sweet little ritual, with dancing and punch, that ends in fond memories of youth’s splendor?
That was last week. This week it means drama. And torment. It means a choreography of complicated steps that will undulate around dress selection and hairstyles and photo-perfect moments (to be virally shared on one of the grams or chats or other networks that bind our whole lives up in knots). It means invitations for pre-parties and post-parties will swirl in the web like a tangle and somehow disappear at the last possible moment like some form of cursed magic.
And some kids will sit it out, engaging in their first cake benders alone in their rooms with the saddest ballads they can pull into their playlists. Who needs a stupid dance, anyway?
Of course, “Cindy” will say something biting about “Jane,” and people will say it’s terrible but agree that they all secretly hate Jane. They use a cold shoulder as their filter. The “truth” becomes a blunt weapon.
Jane, no doubt, doesn’t make things easy for herself. When she speaks her mind, unfiltered, it comes back to bite her. Few people, she’s learning, can juggle these popularity batons because they are on fire.
The thick skin everyone’s telling you about is really just a blister.
Please join me in a piece of spiced, chocolate cake if this sounds familiar.
I’m eating some now. Crumbs are gumming up my keyboard, which I should probably take as a sign.
Nothing good ever comes from venting.
Especially in a vice principal’s office in 1984, where the best advice he could give me was in Latin: “nolite te bastardes carborundorum” - Don’t let the bastards wear you down. Harden yourself. Which, no matter how much we hate it, is the best advice we can heed.
And I will have to do again because I am powerless to stop this seemingly putrid rite of passage, a phase of life that few people wish to relive but can’t avoid if they have human children: The moment your best friend moves on without you, and you feel alone.
The moment all the kindness in the world seems to get sucked out of a gaping hole in your armor.
It’s a moment that can haunt your life forever, but mostly because if you are honest with yourself, there was a similar hurt that you put onto someone else, maybe without even knowing.
It’s a problem that doesn’t have a one-size solution.
The dance isn’t the problem. Nor are the hopes and dreams and expectations. Meanness isn’t even the problem since it is relative (meaning your relatives are most certainly the perpetrators and mine are the victims and vice versa).
Everyone is nursing a wound.
Expectations are hard to control. Feelings are hard to untangle. But we are all in this mess together.
Everyone’s hurting. Just ask a parent.
For right now, the best advice I can give her is: get dressed, get out there and dance like nobody’s watching even if it winds up on one of the tubes. Nolite carborundum. Siobhan Connally is a writer and photographer living in the Hudson Valley. Her column about family life appears weekly in print and online.