do we ever get out of junior high?

i know junior high is a time of crazy insecurity and identification creation, but i never felt it. i've not taken a lot of time to work out why that is, and i've always felt bad for these kids who find it to be such a hard time. honestly, i've put the blame on themselves for their troubles. i've thought they put too much power in the hands of other kids, which has never made sense to me.
but then i was thinking about it.
sure, i was shy and stood off on purpose. i had my little circle of acquaintances, and that was enough for me. but it was in fact quite an awkward time for me. i have scoliosis, and during that time i wore a brace to help straighten me out. braces on your teeth is the common awkward meter, so i guess my problem was on such a different page no one else really knew what to do w/ it either. let me describe this thing to you, it was a plastic bodice molded to my body, starting just below my chest around my sternum, and stopped along the edge of my hips (which were so boney that they had to adjust it to have bumps over my hip bones, since they stuck out just far enough to not cooperate w/ the contraption). it had an opening on one side so my ribs could expand w/ my breathing, and a crack/break (open seam-line?) on the other side from the top to about my waist in order to bend it to put it on. the back was the opening, and it strapped tight with three velcro pulls. i guess it was kinda like an armless straight jacket made out of 1/8" ridged plastic.
yeah, when you're in junior high wearing something like that under your shirt people notice how proper you sit and how strange you move. but, when they find out why, the first thing they want to do is knock on it. and they did. made jokes about how it should have abdominal muscles on it, so that i could act like i was all buffed out. i smile thinking back to those strange days in junior high. i had a shield.
that idea occurred to me just the other day, that God protected me from the common harsh world of adolescence by literally giving me a shield. i had an answer to the other kids about my body (since really it is the body that gains identity in junior high). it didnt matter that i was a 'late-bloomer' and that i didnt look like the other girls. it didnt matter that i wasnt athletic or competitive. it didnt matter that i didnt have a crush on someone or know if someone had a crush on me. i was the girl w/ awesome posture and rock hard abs. i even remember one guy who thought it was so cool that he knocked on my stomach probably everyday, but then in high school when i didnt have it anymore and the rules of life changed yet again, i dont think he even realized who i was (not that you see the same people that often in a school of so many kids). and that might have hurt some people, but my social life wasnt attached to school. my closest friends were the kids i knew at church, and most of them went to other schools or were home-schooled. God was my shield in those formative years, and he gave me a physical shield to take w/ me into life.
a lot of kids dont want to be different from their peers. i never really had a choice. so i embraced it. i took being different on as part of my identity.
now, it's not like i was stuck in it all the time. i think the whole period of wearing it was two years. the first year i had to sleep in it, but not the second. my family was in tae kwon do (self-defense based martial art), and i obviously couldnt wear it there! but i did wear it at summer camp and the various youth group outings, as well as school for those two years.
it allowed for me to have a degree of separation from popularity contests and boy-crazy-neediness. it didnt force me into the outcasts, but it did put me in a place to find out that they're some of the nicest people i know. it put me in a place to know the kind people in all the various cliques. subconsciously i guess it also guided me away from those who are not kind. it's amazing how much drama you can avoid when you dont try to be friends w/ people who dont care about anyone but themselves. hm, i dare say that might be a good piece of advice.
so, i guess what i'm saying is that this culture creates a need for a shield. and so many kids dont have one. even the kids in church dont always get the protection of confidence, the comfort of having an answer to their peers about who they are. so often we dont realize that this is even a need. many times the idea given by adults that identity is something unquestioned only makes it more illusive. i know for me, identity is always changing, and at this point in my life that change is actually part of my identity. maybe if that was something i could go back and tell myself, i would. and i think if that kid could come tell me a thing or two, she'd say "dont forget your shield."