“Kids who were in any way off the extremely narrow line of the norm were persecuted ruthlessly, and I don’t know anyone who just got over it…
“We weren’t pandered to with the myriad of diagnosed anxiety disorders of today’s kids. Naw, we just had eating disorders and mental illnesses that we suffered in secret, silence, and shame.
“For example, one of my high school friends lived in terror that the devil was trying to grab him from underground, one among a number of his quirks that in retrospect point to at least a concern for adolescent onset schizophrenia. No one was concerned. He couldn’t be convinced to stop climbing onto the roof of the school to escape the devil so he was expelled. The boy didn’t end up surviving his twenty-first summer.”
Read the whole thing.
callanswall 