By Allison Lu
Graduating Tech Editor
GRAPHIC/ Allison Lu
I think there’s something so beautiful about photos and how they seem to say “You lived in this moment.” I may never have the same experience again but it makes these times feel all the more special. Anyways, don’t be a stranger.
I keep an ever-present reminder on the lock screen of my phone: you’ll be okay. It’s a self-reassurance I’ve had since the beginning of senior year, but one I never found myself accepting.
How could I be okay when I haven’t prepared enough to stop the inevitable storm of endings from dropping one bombshell after another? I’m swamped by tests I have no motivation to study for, sports practices I could barely bring myself to go to and the never ending stream of work I can’t mark off as finished.
Don’t let senioritis hit you, a voice in my head chanted. Junior year you could have done that and more, it said.
I don’t have any energy to argue.
I pulled myself together–just barely–with the last shreds of self-discipline and dwindling perseverance holding me together. Much of the following months I spent in a daze, moving robotically from one task to the next, doing enough to pass my classes, contribute to the team and prove myself capable in Rampage. There was a sinking numbness of going through the motions; I’ve become a shell of myself, someone whose only purpose was to graduate and move on.
Yet, I continued on because that was the only thing I knew how to do. Days fly by while I stay stuck stagnant. By the end of it, I’m left struggling to grasp the fact that I graduate in less than a month. It doesn’t sit quite right with me.
I can’t focus as much in class, not from lack of motivation but rather from the thoughts that fester in my mind. I dissociate from the present more than I ever have, and in these moments, all I can do is think. Think of my future, where I will go, how I will cope, how things will change. How I will change. It’s the only thing that preoccupies my mind these days and it doesn’t fade with time.
In the past four years, I sentenced myself to a constant state of “have to do” without questioning “why.” It wasn’t social pressure that put me in this situation, but my own self-afflicted expectations.
Maintain a 4.0 GPA. Participate in multiple clubs. Sustain an adequate social status. Build my resume for college and pray and hope the fruits of my labor lead to success. After all, the results are what really matters in the end.
I’m going to PCC next fall. A small part of me shatters with the realization that I will never become the person freshman me dreamed of. An even bigger part, the broken shadow of my junior year self, asks a question I refused to acknowledge all year: After everything I did in high school, was this the best I could do?
In my mind, there’s a gaping chasm separating me from the future; gusts of wind in this void threaten to tip me over the ledge into a sea of doubt I’m afraid to drown in. There’s a bridge in my peripheral; it’s the light at the end of the tunnel.
Sometimes, I imagine sitting across the younger version of me, watching her talk about all her fears, insecurities and doubts. I don’t have to hear it to know the millions of thoughts racing around her head. She’s curled into herself, small, vulnerable; yet, there’s an ambitious spark hidden between the shaky words that reminds me of how I used to be.
I talk to her about how much we changed and she watches me in wonder, awed at the casualty of my posture and the ease at which I recount my past. I don’t mention the bad memories, but the growth that came in its aftermath. Sometimes, I imagine she’d be proud of who I became.
At the end of our talk, I’ll hug her, the girl who used to hate physical contact so much, but has now grown to depend on it. I’ll whisper to her secrets that’ll only make sense to the two of us.
Go out on the boba run and buy the expensive drink that makes you happy for a day.
You only live once.
Spend a little time soul-searching, a little moment to reflect about everything scary but beautiful about living.
You’ll find a tentative peace with where you are.
Because this is only one small chapter of our story. One that contains life lessons far beyond our years, but one full of joy and whimsy, stress and sadness and the little moments hidden between that makes life worth living.
I’ll be okay, I promise, we’ll be okay.