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Speak Out

Speak up.

By Junior BrownPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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I'm not angry, just scowling.

Navigating through high school can be a journey of itself, I’ll tell you that. One of my biggest weaknesses was often communication. Granted, I asserted myself to others. There would be times I would avoid direct confrontation. Maybe I was trying not to be dramatic or have one of those nasty spats with people like I’m a chill person. Sometimes I am, but even I have a temper, though probably not as much compared to some individuals in high school who can explode like crazy.

I didn’t realize I’d sometimes bottle up my issues, thinking they’d go away. If a good friend has made me angry, I’ll stop talking to them. This has happened a few times.

For instance, at the start of my senior year of high school, I had a friend, and we were tight. She had to be one of the funniest, coolest, and nicest person I have ever met. We even went to homecoming together. While saying she’s popular might be stretching it, she did have a large following with people that sometimes, I’d be jealous. We had some good times, but our relationship often got rocky.

We had physics together, and it was a mix of people who were seniors and juniors. She has such an attractive personality, people in the class became friends with her. It’s like she’s a born charmer. But there were times I felt she brought out the worst in me. Around the second, it felt/seemed as if she didn’t want me around. One second, she wanted to talk. Other times, she’d tell me to piss off. Ok, she never said that, but that’s how it felt. Even one of her friends acted so unkind even though I had done nothing wrong to her. I’ve always tried being a loyal friend, and I would never do anything to hurt her. I didn’t understand this because she never treated her other friends this way. At least, I don’t think so. Enough is enough. I don’t play that way with anyone.

One time, I got to where I’d avoided talking to her and that’s what I did. When she saw me walking by myself in the hallway, she called out to say hi. I chose not to reply. When we met up in our classroom, she asked me why I ignored her. I couldn’t even give her an actual explanation. I wasn’t always good at being vocal, which is pretty ironic because I can be vocal depending on the situation... and person. For the longest time, she didn’t know why I was so angry with her. For the next few months, I continued not speaking to her, yet she missed my company. Now, she knows how it feels to be unwanted, though the time I spent not talking to her wasn’t easy for me, either. Then one day it occurred to me: “Is this how you want to remember your final year of high school?” Maybe I thought of something like that.

The point is, I never told her of the times she rudely asked me to go away or how her friend would do the same thing and she never stood up for me. I felt I owed it to myself and her to tell her why I was so angry.

Plus, it’s not like I was happy the time I wasn’t speaking to her. Soon I realized that bottling up my anger isn’t a good way of dealing with my problems. And it took me until my final year of high school to learn that. Yay, me. So, I found her in the hallway one day. She was ecstatic I was at least speaking to her again. I told her about the way she treated me in a calm tone and she even apologized. I was so relieved when I had gotten that off my chest. For the rest of the year, we had no problems with each other. I was just glad we could maintain our friendship. I didn’t want to leave high school and look back and regret not speaking to her. It was a lesson I had learned and I’m glad I’d learned it in time.

And that's just about it. Communication is the key to establishing better relationships. Whether or not the person who made you angry apologizes, it’s better to let that person know you're angry or upset than just bundling it up inside. To think, if I had learned this earlier in high school, I could have relieved so much anger and stress. In the future, I'll try to apply this a lot more.

friendship
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About the Creator

Junior Brown

I'm a third year student at my college and I love to write.

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