"My high school predicted I'd end up as road kill."

“Roadkill”; “A single mum partying in the city”; “Married to an old man to steal his money”; “A check out chick or a stripper”; “The main attraction at a freak show”; “Married to a FOB”; “the next Osama Bin Laden”; “dole bludger”; “Dead”.

These are just a few of the charming predictions made by my high school grade about their classmates.

Predictions that were published once, in our year book, and then published again, 10 years later, on the Facebook page for my high school reunion. “I was invisible then too… still am,” one girl, who was left off the list entirely, commented at the repost.

Anyone who says that high school wasn’t hard for them is either a monster or a liar. Being trapped between childhood and adulthood, your brain is a soup of hormones and your identity a mucus covered chick, trying desperately to break out of its shell is as gross and weird as it sounds. But some people have a harder time in high school than others.

The casual cruelty, slut-shaming, racism, sexism and generalised fear of difference displayed in our class’ assessment of each other is a pretty accurate reflection of what the school itself was like.

What’s particularly galling is how judgemental the hurling of these labels was meant to be. The kids who were friends with the ones making the predictions were slated to wind up as “lawyer”; “vice president of the world”; “singer”; “soccer player” and “vet”, as if fame or an upper middle class profession is the zenith of human achievement, while winding up a single parent or unemployed is the worst thing that could happen to a person.

With age and wisdom, these markers of success and failure will hopefully become meaningless. But in high school, future wealth and status was everything.

High school, for whatever reason, brings out the worst in people. Perhaps it’s because teenagers are so terrified of their own uncertain place in the world that they’re incapable of empathizing with others. Or perhaps, I just went to a really shitty school.

It’s easy to let the pain of adolescence fog over once it’s finished. In fact, a bit of Vaseline slicked over our memory’s lens is likely the only way we can – as Evelyn Waugh would say – let the scars of puberty heal. But just because it’s nicer not to remember, doesn’t mean we should let ourselves forget.

It’s worth whipping our heads back around and really examining how awful we once were too each other and how some people copped it much worse than others. Because the thing is, the bullying at my high school wasn’t one or two rogues terrorizing the masses. It was an emergent phenomenon. It was every single person, myself included, choosing to be a little less nice, a little less patient, a little less accepting and a whole lot meaner than we should have been. The compound of which was an environment where no one really felt safe to be themselves, to thrive, or to be happy.

I’ve read through those predictions over and over. The first time I read them, they made me squirm with anger. Then they made me very sad, they ripped open a vein I thought had healed and what poured out was dark and bitter. But now I’m glad I saw them again, because I think they serve as a reminder.

Those predictions were made to hurt but they hurt in a different way now. They hurt in the way that a lot of learning hurts. We do something bad, our conscience kicks in and makes us feel awful and we never do it again.

Those lists of predictions show that there’s something quite despicable about thinking like a high school student. That when everyone approaches the world in that same, callow way, the world is not a good place to be.

They remind me how glad I am I survived my school, scars and all. And how much better it feels never to have to think that way again. I only hope my classmates feel the same way.