New school year

I’ve officially been in school for about two weeks now.

I’m in a peculiar situation as someone who has now returned to where they first went to school for three years but then left. I’m back now!

It’s weird to see all these same-ish faces who have grown out of the childlike phase in their lives. Like when you stare at an old photograph of your grandma, the same person she is now, but a changed form from the yellow singed edges of the picture held in your hands. I guess it would be the other way around though. Seeing everyone all “grown up” now. But it’s the same nostalgia and faint air of familiarity that’s recognized.

And of course, there are all the new people I’ve never met but heard about one way or the other. I wonder if they knew about me before. I still wonder if they even know me now despite the fact that I exist within their perception five days out of the week now.

I never fully realized the extent of what it means to go to a good school. I don’t mean a stereotypically or subjectively better school, I mean a school that is good for me. A school where I can be happy and acclimated. I don’t know if I realized that I was miserable all of last year in school, I mean misery was the norm for me. Not in a grim way but in a “this is just how life is for me and everyone else” kind of way. Maybe that’s not so normal… because now I am happy in school.

What a weird thing to say.

I feel so lucky that I can be genuinely content not just outside of my school life now. I don’t want to speak too soon into the school year and jinx everything that’s to come, but my mental health has already skyrocketed from where it was last year.

That isn’t to say there aren’t any new or existing problems in my school now. I mean some flaws are so obvious it would be blasphemy to ignore. The boys are still terrible but just in a different, more pretentious, and obnoxiously wealthy kind of way, some of the conversations I overhear are literally bleeding with ignorance (the bubble is real but its also bliss so who can I blame…), and the very same and very brutal judgment every teenage girl possesses still all exists. But it can also exist with the better aspects of my new school life.

One thing I have realized about myself in the past year is my need to be sufficiently challenged when it comes to my academic pursuits. One reason I felt so stagnant last year was because of the lack of rigor in my school environment. A feeling of a lack of progression in life is built in with the absence of challenge. Confined in this box of knowing this and that. Some people say that they work best under pressure. I don’t know if that sentiment can be applied to me but I do know that it’s the pressing urgency of advancing that can assist in getting things done. I think I need some part of that rigorous pressure to help me grow in life.

I mean now I can thankfully say that I’m optimistic about life and feel like I’m moving upward in my growth as a real human person. That feeling of growth can also be scary as it kind of means that change is coming (or better yet, is happening). It’s hard to grapple with that sense of evolving even when its for the better. It doesn’t mean you’re leaving behind your “past” or youth (if that’s not too ironic of a word for me to use), only that you recognize that you are not currently in it, and that you’ll never be in it again. I could even say that about me and my life two months ago, there’s a certain sting that comes with remembering I’ll never exist in that current moment ever again.

I’m getting off track now, but back to my previous point, growth is necessary and feeling it happen is simultaneously joyous as it signifies the entrance to a new chapter in your life. I think I’m in my “new chapter” and hopefully it all goes well…