#AWKWARDAF AKA WHY I LOVED MIDDLE SCHOOL
Here we are, standing in a room full of awkward, lanky, super rad middle schoolers.
It brings me right back to my own middle school experience. Grade 7 and 8 were two of the best years of my entire life.
(Thanks awesome teachers, I’m looking at you Ms. Roberts, Mr. Schoenfeld, and Ms. Diceman. )
I think I liked middle school so much mostly because EVERYONE felt shitty in their own skin for this one window of time.
Think about it. Who felt awesome about themselves in middle school? No one! That’s who! There are endless books, and movies, and after school specials set right dab in the middle of these formative years because we can all relate to feeling weird, and gangly, and not quite sure we’re doing anything right. We were all walking around trying to fit into these weird ill fitting skin sacks, it made me feel less alone, made me feel a little less broken. For a few years I felt like I didn’t belong just like everyone else. It’s just that mostly everyone else grew into their skin sacks and mine grew more and more restrictive.
Now here I was back right in the middle of it. Too big teeth, too big feels, and too many hormones all lovingly jam packed into one room!
This is the moment that I realize I probably should have been a middle school teacher because my heart just explodes in a room of these kiddos. I just want to hug them all and tell them that everything is going to be okay. They’ll find their way, that their jokes will get funnier and their voice will eventually drop and that they might keep feeling lost like this forever, but that eventually they’ll realize that everyone does and it’ll be okay anyway.
I hugged and high fived smiling kids and teary kids and shy kids, and loud kid, and gay kids and straight kids and trans kids and their friends and their teachers. There was pizza, and karaoke and we showed them our heart and soul in the form of our 20 minute documentary Just Another Beautiful Family.
I secretly dislike watching our film in the presence of other people.
It makes my skin crawl to watch myself be so open and vulnerable face to face with all of these humans. I mostly want to hide. I want to crawl in a hole and never come out.
Except the thing is that I made this film for a 13 year old boy just like these kids. One who stood on a stage so bravely and shared his story, the one where kids beat him up, and told him he didn’t deserve to live. As heart breaking as that story was though he said, I can live with that, but what I really need to know is “ will anybody ever even love me!?”
And so I put my big boy pants on, I show up, I hold my wife’s hand and I say “YES! You queer kiddo, you absolutely will be loved! Because you are amazing! And the thing that makes you different is actually the thing that makes you beautiful. Just hold on, it gets better! There’s so much love out there waiting for you!”
So to all you middle schoolers out there (in spirit and in body) hold on.
From middle school me to middle school you.
Hugs or High Fives,
Nick