| i remember reading becky dinerstein's day before last day of high school entry last year, talking about how she doesn't even understand what it means. i've started, recently, to know. it means that rubbing my nose in front of kenny after a test is over. it means that rushing for the best locker the first day of school is through. it means that i'm done with papers for la bonne, done with projects for great books, done with tests for calc and bio (oh wait, scratch that, stuy, in true spirit, has given me two lovely tests on thursday). It means that awesome spontaneous fridays that wind up in hopefully lifelong friendships are fond memories and running through battery park after school was a good time. It means that the words Fiddler on the Roof don't make me reach immediately for a songbook to start practicing for an audition. No more terry's, morgan's or gourmet dilemmas. No more warning bells. No more Mr. Farbstein cynical and insightful lectures. No more 4-2 escalator rides or afternoon bio sessions or cheer camps or SINGs. No more hearing Ms. McCaffrey yell, come on girls!!!, seeing Mr. Connolley and the payroll secretary under the scaffolding, no more treks up the bridge, up the broken escalators. It means that walking along Broadway to destress after school was a thing i used to do. It means that I, for the first time in 13 years, am not going to school with my best friend.
the part that i can't understand is not what i'm leaving behind that i know, but what i'm leaving behind that i don't know. at prom, surrounded by people all slow dancing just like me for the last few songs, i realized these people were with me for four years and i knew, maybe, half of them? do i concede that it's over, that half of them will remain faces in my yearbook? how can i accept that when i've met people like jonah simpson in the last two months, when i had my first real talk with matt nestor on sunday, when there's still SO MUCH to be explored? how could i possibly think that i was bored of stuyvesant when it still, secretly had so much to offer?
and yet, simulatenously, i'm so ready to leave it. I'm glad i can leave knowing that there was no better place for me (except Andover? Exeter? ahh another life...), and even if there was, i'm happy knowing that i couldn't picture it any other way. I'm glad it's allowed me to grow into myself and step out of the shadows of middle school. I'm thankful it's allowed me to become more comfortable with myself. And whenever i hear something like john's memoir (the law of conservation of energy as applied to death), or listen to jazz on the way to the hamptons after prom, or dance with my bio class during the cat dissection to calypso music, or laugh with emily about how we love the same part of gizem's poem where the sugar crystals melt and ooze from her fingers, i can't help but think man, i love stuy. who are all these people? they're amazing. but i'm ready to go. I'm ready to move on to something else and to know that a place like stuy exists where there's always something more to offer. I'd much rather leave stuy not fully explored than leave it completely bored. I can only think of the word satisfaction. Complete and utter satisfaction.
Where did it go it was so...where did it go it was so...
Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior...
My childhood gone, goodbye.
Goodbye twelve. Goodbye thirteeen, Goodbye fourteen.
Goodbye fifteen. Goodbye sixteen. Goodbye seventeen.
Hello love!
Go to it! Go to it!
And now life really begins.
P.S. shit! made it through high school without growing tits!! (hahaha <3 valerie clark) |
