Fitting in

I opened my facebook about a few days ago and saw a post from one of my groups. The post included the planned highschool reunion of my block way back then. The guys who acted as organizers said that, "Everyone is invited as long as your from our section/block. No groups, no factions, no 'barkadas'. Basta ma-solid ang section." Or something like that.

IV-St. Therese batch 2003. No barkadas. Just us.

Hell, I didn't even associate myself with them. Sure, they're my classmates and all, I spent four years of my teenage life with them, and I could count on one hand people I consider friends among them but somehow I didn't belong. So far, my friends were from the other section. IV-St. Cecilia. Now those guys were cool with me, mainly because they accepted me. I would cut some classes and just sit in on them. My section was one floor below the Cecilia's room, but that didn't stop me.

The reason I didn't get along with the Therese kids was mainly because I didn't fit it. Well, at least with them. I just couldn't get them, really. So, I went on with four years, trying to fit in but could not. Then at about senior year, I just gave up. i won't force myself on such people. Besides, the people I go around school with... Well, I feel comfortable with them. While in my class, I had to struggle. One wrong comment (at least for them.) and they think you're different. Weird. Baduuuuy... By fourth year, I just didn't care.

One particular person was an ex-friend. Well, at least a former member of our circle. Until he started hanging out with the other guys (those typical, highschool jock-types who think they're cool but all of a sudden you realize that they're just being total douchebags. Yep, I tried fitting in with the "in" crowd back then). It was okay at first, but when I got first-hand information that this guy was bad-mouthing a friend of mine - the one who considered him a best friend - well, it changes your whole perspective. I started hating the guy. I hated him so much I wouldn't take notice of him, even after college. Do you have to sell out your friend just to fit in? Well, it worked for him.

The rest? All the same. They'll look cool and "in" at first, then when you look closely at them, they just start to look the same. Acting so high and popular when the people around them wouldn't give a cent's worth about them. Maybe that's just the stigma of high school. It's just pathetic how their pride would swell with just one measly praise that it just get to their heads that it becomes too silly. They may say now that I would not understand, but I'll answer, "oh, I get you all right. I understand you guys too well."

Our assistant principal asked me to help her make sense of it all. I just explained that she wouldn't. Not even if she tried. The only comforting words I just told her were, "at least you'll be rid of us on graduation day." Somehow that made her feel better. Upon asking whether she should tell my section what she thought of them, I made the most kind act I could give to my classmates.

"What they don't know won't hurt them." But I was telling it in a way that our assistant principal wouldn't hurt herself. You know the guys who made fun of teachers to the point of disrespect, and think of themselves as better than the advice they get from those teachers? Yeah. They are the kind.

(At this point, I would state my own fault. I mean, I'm not clean myself. I can think of several unsavory traits of our own adviser. Now she is another case a whole new post would fill up.)

So far, I'm far away from them as possible. And I'd like to keep it that way. The only excuse I could think of when the rarest chance of someone from my class meeting up with me is that I should be at least polite and civil (except for the guy I mentioned earlier).

My girlfriend is my classmate back then, also a Therese kid. But she was different. She was one of the girls I plain ignored. Well, how we got together that is a different story. But for some reason, she understood me. Whereas the others, well... I don't get them, they don't get me. Me and my 'barkada' back then are still a solid group up to now. They adopted me in their section, and so far other Cecilia folks don't mind. Most of them consider me a friend. Despite me not being one of them, I found myself fitting in quite well. Ironically, it was with the Therese's I tried opening up. While the Cecilia's I didn't have a hard time with so. Maybe that's just it. You just can't please everybody, and I was somehow an outcast in my block. But there were my real friends on the second floor that I could hang out with.

That may be just the thing. You cannot fit in with people you don't like even if your life depended on it. But you'll eventually find people - friends - who you'll trust your life with. You don't need to fit in once you realize you know where you belong. Not to some cool group, or with your classmates just because they are so. It was high school back then. We gotta enjoy that phase of life. There was nothing I regretted going through that awkward experience. I learned that there are people like that... and it was not my scene.

Did I fit in? Thank God I didn't. Who knows what I ended up as.