Picture this: It’s a breezy Friday afternoon in November of 2012. One Direction just released their second album Take Me Home. You share your headphones with your friend on the bus ride home from school, and the two of you discuss which sparkly headband you’re going to match together at the mall later that day. Your biggest worries are choosing between #TeamEdward or #TeamJacob and remembering to feed your Tamagotchi.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. I am by no means justifying the way I styled my side swoop bangs, low-rise gaucho pants, and Crocs or drowning my hair in curling gel to be then fried by the flat iron. Let’s not forget about the pounds of drug-store mascara I stocked up on to show off at the local Catholic-school sock hop, pumping my fist to Sean Kingston.
When I say I peaked, I most certainly am not talking about the way I looked, but I’m talking about the absolute bad-bitch, confident, fun, fabulous energy that consumed my pre-pubescent brain from the ages of 11-14.
I had the world at my fingertips, or at least the nanoscopic life I considered to be my world at the time. As the lead anchor of morning announcements, pep-rally coordinator, and certified class clown all-in-one, I emanated what I believed was peek popularity.
But what I loved the most was this: EVERYONE had confidence. No matter who you were, what your “thing” was, or how many Pokémon cards and Sillybandz you had in your collection, we all strutted those minuscule hallways like the brace-faced kings and queens we assumed to be (unless you were the horse girl… then you galloped).
I mean c’mon… there is not a chance in hell that we all went into public wearing pre-wrap in our hair and carrying duck-tape purses if it weren’t for our absolutely colossal egos. I had absolutely no business flirting with all of the 8th-grade hotties, but the social-media-less, non-judgmental, and easygoing world I lived in made me the most vivacious middle-schooler to exist.
My point is that “peaking” has nothing to do with looks. Peaking means undeniably loving yourself and believing others love you just as much. It’s that feeling of assuming you’re always going to be the hottest one in the room, just out of pure, self-made appeal.
So, I shall make it my quest from now on to conjure my inner boyband-loving, noodle-looking, hair-crimping middle-school self because she was one of the happiest versions of me. You should do the same! Instagram is just a glorified Myspace after all.
second to last paragraph... beautifully said