I am writing a letter to myself and to who ever would like to listen. As I now reflect back on the majority of my cold winter afternoons spent with my Springside Varsity Squash team, I am struck by the magnitude of which they have impacted my life this year. I have come to realize that it is possible to learn a lifetime more from short encounters with people who in the beginning you hardly know but unquestioningly love, support, and believe in you than from the people who you have spent a lifetime with.
I am 18 years old and I am writing to you on January 23, 2009, two months exactly after my 18th birthday. Two months after I became an adult. Seven weeks after the day I truly grew up. I found out my father had cancer the same day I found out I got into college exactly a week after my 18th birthday. It made me angry that such unnerving news could come with such relieving news as getting into college. I never felt relieved, I couldn’t. Instead the irony of it all made me cringe.
Throughout high school I feel that I have lost a great deal but have also gained a lot more understanding of myself and the people around me which has equipped me to become the strong young lady I know I am. I have been surviving a long side the people I know, who themselves are surviving their own losses of loved ones, of dreams, of direction.
I have come to realize that these four years could possibly be some of the best and worst of your life… but I still say take your time ladies. You cannot speed through any of it, because chances are you will learn more about yourselves and those around you from the worst times than from the best. Your character will be tested both socially & academically but especially through the events that will unfold and by the end you will know your weaknesses and your strengths. I promise. And as hard as it is to admit it isn’t necessarily going to be your friends that help you get through it as much as it will be yourself.
A series of events have taken what feels like a never-ending holiday in my senior year. A year that is suppose to be filled with epic happiness of spending time with friends, of being mischievous, taking chances, just plain adolescent rebellion the kind that makes you feel alive. I know you all know what that feels like and if not yet, one day you will.
The weight of my fathers illness has caused me to take notice of the kids I do see enjoying high school but has also connected me to the kids for what ever reason have been cheated out of the enjoyment and forced to grow up a little faster than the others. I envy those who have had the gift of just being a kid in high school but I wouldn’t ever change positions with them because this is my own distinct process of growing up. I know everyone has one. So, in stead I have just been trying to survive. I have lost friends throughout high school but especially this year who in my opinion didn’t know how to survive a long with me or quite possibly didn’t want to when they heard of my father’s cancer, no one is perfect, but because of this I’ll admit I have lost a little bit of myself.
But it is all so contradictory of itself, you lose a little but you gain a little too. I can’t begin to comprehend it all but I feel that in time I will eventually be able to make sense of my high school experience & hopefully understand the impact I have had on the people I have encountered.
I think there was a point in time in my high school career, where I lost a great deal of myself to just surviving. However, this year I didn’t just try to survive all the time at some points I felt like I was truly living, and that was when I was just being myself playing squash with my team or walking through the halls of Springside on the receiving end of their bright and cheery hellos. When certain friends choose to exit my life my team without hesitation choose to enter it. They have served as a constant reminder to me to believe in the real me. It is an indescribable impact that has made all the difference, I feel like I have found confidence in the real me, just because they unquestioningly loved, supported, and believed in me when I needed it most.
High School has taught me many things, like how some people cannot understand or accept change. But, I have also learned that just because this flaw exists in some people it doesn’t mean that you have to hold yourself back from growing into the person that you want to become. I know to never allow yourself to get lost amongst people who don’t really know or accept the real you because you might lose whatever knowledge you have of the person you are to act of just surviving.
This year especially I have been challenged to stop just surviving to do away with the numb feelings that surviving demands. Because if there is one thing I have learned from it all it is that no matter what happens in these four years, life is unpredictable, and it is difficult to control. Reasons often get lost in it all and as hard as you search for them sometimes you come up short. But we need to understand that we have to keep moving, living not just for ourselves but for the people we know, the people we love, the people who have had a true impact on our lives, and for those people we haven’t even met yet but whose lives we ourselves will have an impact on.
It is hard to define one specific thing that I am trying to say but my audience isn’t a room full of homogeneously defined people so I feel that we all myself included can choose to take away what ever information we need from this letter, whatever lesson but if you still feel unfulfilled by my letter understand this; Life is not just about surviving a series of events good or bad, but it is about experiencing the passion for pursuing the actual feeling of being the real you.
That is what I believe.
Sincerely,
With love.
