Advice for my middle schooler

My daughter started middle school today, in a new state.  Yes, during perhaps the most awkward transition of school life, elementary to middle, I ripped my daughter away from her friends and brought her somewhere entirely new.  "Guilt" would be my middle name were it not already "pinnacle of beauty and brains".  

And this new middle school is massive.  It's humongous.  If it had barbed wire around it, and you saw the kids outside from a distance, you'd have no problem believing it was a prison for midgets- so huge is its brick edifice and hordes of short humans.  It scares the shit out of me.  I can't even imagine what my little 11 year old is feeling.

This is where they imprison, I mean educate, the children.

People might say, oh kids are resilient.  She'll be fine.  Yes, she will be fine one day.  But I don't think that day was yesterday when she was thinking about how tough today was going to be.  And I don't think that day was this morning when she was at her bus stop and the other girls were all wearing dresses (yes I now live in a place where girls still wear dresses to the first day of school... wtf?).  That day may not be tomorrow when homework assignments start rolling in.  And that day may not be six months from now when some little brat makes fun of her clothes or hair or the question she asked in class... because let's be honest, kids are fuckfaces.

At the bus stop today I said, "Honey, trust me, everything's going to be okay." But I realized that was total bullshit. I honestly couldn't even keep a straight face while I said it.  After all, I didn't know if everything was going to be okay.  I haven't been to this school, don't know her teachers, and definitely don't know the evil that could be stewing in the misshapen cranium of the moron sitting next to her in home room. 

Let's face it... everything might not be okay.  My middle school years were no bowl of cherries.  They weren't bowl shaped at all.  More like a boot full of shit topped road kill.  Frankly, everything might be crappy.  Very, very crappy.  

Could it be wonderful?  Could her teacher shit rainbows and the principal be Pikachu? Sure, anything's possible.  But I couldn't promise her that.

Nope, as I stood at the bus stop watching her sweat due to nerves, the 90 degree weather and the very, very late bus, I could only promise her one thing.  

"Well, maybe it won't be okay.  But I can promise you it's eventually going to be over."

Middle school ends.  If you're lucky you live through it and are only mildly traumatized.  And then you get to high school to spend four years with the same idiots who now have mustaches.  Even the boys.

It'll all be over soon...