Complexity of Place

Based on "A Bit of Relief: I Forgive You, New York" by Roger Cohen, one of my favorite pieces.

I forgive you, school. I forgive you your melancholia, your monotony, your tendency to induce stress and angst. I forgive you the irritating alarm clocks slept through on dark mornings when I wish to reside in the comfort of my dreams instead of the deep somnambulism that is every day. I forgive you the 65-minute blocks of my least favorite class. I forgive you the dreaded journey from A floor to E floor on a bad day. I forgive you the classes without a friend to sit next to, long nights of homework, eyes filled with tears while confronting a teacher or holding them back during class. I forgive you the cruel rumors spread through the hall and not being able to find an outfit in the morning. I forgive you the cold calling, even that. I forgive you the thick current of competition I feel I might drown under any second, societal normalities I do not align with, and expectations I feel I must live up to. I forgive you every teacher who took my passion for a subject and crushed it until it became ash thrown into the sea, my enthusiasm forgotten alongside its death. I forgive you every moment that my heart sank to my toes, and even the moments that it disappeared completely.

I forgive you, standardized tests and unannounced quizzes. I forgive you for not knowing the days I was sad, for not embracing me warmly when I was freezing. I forgive you for never slowing down, even when I did not have the energy to keep up. I forgive you for being there every single day, mandating my attendance, the place I spend most of my time next to my own home - well, until you are not.

Forgive me, high school, for just this morning I felt like a freshman until I checked the calendar and realized my mind was four years behind.

I know I did not thank you enough for the morning drives with my favorite musical companions on the radio, screaming the lyrics in the car on the way. I did not thank you enough for the anticipation of Thursdays that I named “Friday Eves," for the smiles in the hall from strangers, for the sunflower mural in the LG wing that never ceases to fill me with admiration, for passing my crush between classes, for holding some of my favorite books in your library that has become a sort of repository in which everything I grapple with, it seems, can be resolved. Thank you for class discussions that everyone engages in, where I can appreciate the symbiosis of it all—the synthesis of all of our different vantage points. Thank you for the ideas that alter my perspective and teachers with genuine fervor for what they do. I am grateful for the bus ride home from field hockey games that we won, and ones we did not. I am grateful for the boy who always raises his hand to ask the questions I am too scared to, the girl who never fails to have extra highlighters, and the teacher who asks how our day is going before beginning the lesson. I am grateful for the sunny days and the rainy ones, the easy classes and the hard ones. Football games, foliage, the smell of spring, having study hall last, the flower shop just down the street, creative projects, eating lunch outside, a pretty agenda, my physics lab partner who is now a friend—oh, how the contrast makes these mere things that much sweeter.

Being a student, I was tired, and my judgment was clouded. Within this period of identity moratorium, I almost forgot about my youthful wonder. Now I look around during senior sunrise and see everyone's beauty beside the entrancing backdrop of the sky, and am filled with a sensation, a deep awareness of where I am and who I am with. How astonishing we ended up here?

Now I cherish every moment and try to capture each one within the folds of my soft-bound journal or the memory card of my digital camera, that I may look back on with bittersweet nostalgia. Please, do not leave too soon, do not release me into the real world and leave me vulnerable to its uncertainties, for I would like to linger here a bit longer.

Love,

El