n our generation, our perception of new experiences is often shaped by the media surrounding them. Cheesy teen coming-of-age movies taught me that high school was going to be filled with cliques, stereotypical mean girls, and vying for the attention of our peers. And while, yes, maybe there was some truth in those exaggerations, I’ve found that the high school experience is not so cut and dried. No clique should stop you from befriending whomever you want. The “mean girls” really aren’t so mean. Everyone just wants their voice to be heard.
Since the beginning of high school, I feel as though I’ve grown significantly out of the quiet, reserved freshman I once was. To be entirely honest, I was struggling with my mental health by the end of eighth grade and coming into high school. My mom likes to characterize this time of my life as when I let people walk all over me. For a while, I felt like I had lost my voice. Whether it was the isolation of the pandemic or the typical social changes that middle schoolers seem plagued by, I struggle to pinpoint the reasons why I felt so distanced. But no matter the cause, I was determined to find the cure before I graduated.
Near the movie stereotype, I tried to let high school be my fresh start. I dug into my interests, threw myself into academics and student government, and attempted to reignite the social butterfly inside of me. My new mission was to turn my high school experience into the rediscovery of my voice. As a senior graduating tomorrow, I’m thankful to say that I believe I accomplished that goal. Perhaps you know my voice as one of the incessant speakers during Plenary, have heard me continuously singing throughout the halls and choir room, or listened to and read my poetry from MX or “Phaedrus.” Although this is my first, and last, time writing for “The Weekly,” I’m no stranger to sharing my writing. I think the biggest cultivator for rediscovering my voice was Slam Poetry, and what Slam has taught me is that there will always be people who can connect with your experiences, people who will hear your voice mirroring their own and know that they are not alone.
Recently, the Slam Poetry team hosted our annual MX. I always believe Slam’s goal is to connect with our audience and create a safe, yet vulnerable environment—to call Parker students into a space of empathy and challenge each other to think introspectively. This year especially, I feel like the topics we chose to share about truly challenged the student body. Though I feel like my voice has earned respect over the years, I couldn’t say that my poem did this time. Multiple poems touched on current feminist topics, explored the changing landscape of reproductive rights, and called the audience to empathize with a perspective that they might not have embodied before. To put it plainly, I think our poems were more radical than what current students usually see pass the Parker stage, and my own poem was no exception.
My poem, “love isn’t a woman,” was written originally for my performance in Young Chicago Authors’ Rooted & Radical Poetry Festival. Since taking Women’s Literature first semester, I can’t seem to shut up about the women’s experience, and this poem was yet another example of my quest to dismantle misogynistic culture using media. Constructed by combining multiple of my own experiences with different men in my life, I attempted to capture my own feelings about being objectified by men. Though, sure, the poem includes men, I did not write this poem for them. I wrote this poem for every girl in the audience who snapped along to my story of sexual harassment by an 18-year-old boy from Tucson, for the girls who resonated with lovers not understanding them deeply, for the women who felt like the men in their lives believed we owed them ourselves.
I don’t think my experiences nor my poem were some grand revelations the world has never seen before—the number of girls who thanked me for sharing stories that so closely reflected their own is a testament to how universal my experiences are—but I do think that some of the Parker audience was not ready for my honesty. I fear the Parker audience is not ready for many things. But we as a collective should embrace conversations that make us uncomfortable, not shy away from them. On one hand, I am sorry that my performance caused so much harm to some individuals. But on the other, I will not be sorry for sharing my voice. I will not be sorry because dozens of girls in that room felt like they were not alone. I will not be sorry because sometimes you will have to be the first voice. Sometimes your story will be too important to wait for someone else to tell it.
After the MX, I was struggling to grapple with why I was so disappointed in the outcome of my performance. Part of me was so ecstatic that girls approached me and were thanking me for sharing. But part of me was also longing for the understanding of my male peers in the audience. I think the easy way out would be to blame my feelings of inadequacy on the misogynistic culture around male approval. I think the harder truth is simply that I was hurt. In the aftermath, I felt as though some of my closest friends—girls and boys alike—couldn’t understand why I wanted to share such a piece. To me, it felt like they were saying that the hard conversations were just too hard to have. And what I learned was that it will be hard to be the one starting those conversations, but I promise those conversations are more than worth the hardship.
Since then, I’ve had numerous lovely conversations with the girls around me. Girls who always intimidated me or who I feared disliked me were coming up to me and beginning conversations. We got philosophical. We were emotional. We were honest. We talked about the struggle women face of being reduced to the men in their lives. We were frustrated by being labeled as certain guys’ “girls.” We admitted that sometimes high school was harder than we expected. We talked about our regrets, what we wished we could do over.
I wish I hadn’t cared so much about what other people thought about me. I wish I was more confidently bold. I wish I hadn’t bought into believing the mean girl high school stereotype. I wish we showed our love for each other more.
After everything, my advice is to share your story. Sometimes the mere sharing of your voice is enough, sometimes it’s your message that speaks the loudest. When there is discomfort, there is room for change, and you should never be afraid of your voice being that catalyst. How else will we grow?