In my twenties, I have become more like a high school student than most high school students ever do. Does that make sense? I've been a total snot about stuff, not letting things roll off my back with the natural grace growing older should entail, undervaluing my family and last but not leastly talking shit on other people to make myself feel better.

Why is that?

In high school, I fit very few high school stereotypes. The few that I did hit were:

1. Obsessing about boys and about dating boys (in retrospect, this has much more to do with wanting to seem like any other girl and not wanting anyone else to see what i could see but did not yet understand: that there was something kind of different about me).
2. Feeling that I was somehow worth less as a person because I was...ah...rubenesque (am I using that word incorrectly here? I'm too lazy to look it up).
3. Cutting (a little tip I picked up from a) my bipolar best friend in 9th grade and b) some article in Seventeen on the subject. this was largely, I think, because I was hoping that my parents or someone would see how much pain I was in and insist that I go see a shrink. But no one ever saw. No one knew. No one insisted. So I kept at it).
4.Writing sappy poetry.

But I was always very kind to others and for the most part I really valued the family dynamic. Well, except for some issues with my father.

In my early twenties, though, and especially since I began working with high school students I have found myself acting much like the adolescents whom I (occasionally) despise.

What bothers me the most is when I really see myself talking trash about other people. Why do I do that? It certainly doesn't fix the personality flaws that I so accurately spot in them. I do it because it makes me feel better. And then I feel catty and shallow and about two inches tall.

I don't think I'm the only one who does this. One of my coworkers is twenty-six and a real bitch-o-rama. She constantly walks all over people, acting as if she is the foremost authority on...oh...everything in the world. This bothered me, but I'm kind of passive about stuff a lot of the time, and it just went on for much longer than it should have -- and we became pretty friendly.

One night in April, after many alcoholic drinks, she went off on me about how I was an affront to the gay rights movement because I was not yet out to my parents (it should be noted that she is totally straight. but, you know, she's an authority on everything so she totally knows what it's like). Of course, because I am a pussy, I didn't do anything but sob while she reamed me for half an hour.

A week later, though, after some more alcoholic drinks I told her she really needs to stop treating people badly because it's just not acceptable behavior.

She hasn't spoken to me since. And we work together.

I think that behavior is much more Junior High.
Mine is eleventh grade...at least.