Wake Me Up When It Ends

I have to admit that I’ve been really busy for the past five months. Well, that’s just an excuse. I sure had free-time, but my thoughts are scattered everywhere and I could not make up my mind to write something good here. Senior year is all about exams—to me which feel like endless exams.

In the last day of my national examination, I found myself coming home at 10 am and spent one good hour of opening my old photo folders. Those are the places when I brace myself reminiscing the old days. I keep trying to deny the fact, that high school will end soon. It feels so unreal, up until the day I wrote this. I know it’s cliche, but it feels like just yesterday I wore this fresh, unscratched, new uniform. It feels like a day ago, a girl who was soon to be my classmate, came up to me and said “Whoa, do you remember me? You sat right beside me when we had that mathematic olympiad back then.”

There is a quite ridiculous paradox about high school. Everyone has their eyes flashing when the teacher talks about dreams and careers. Everyone’s really eager to start the next phase of adulting. In the other hand, everyone also doesn't want to let go of their precious friendship, their comfort zones. After high school ends, whatever responsibilities I’ll carry and let say, I couldn’t do the job properly, I can’t ask for mercy because I’m not a teeny teenager anymore. The thing about adulting is how we handle the responsibility we take would reflect our level of maturity.

In the course of 3 years, I have changed, although it's not so conspicuous. I learn how to adapt, how to blend in with the people around you. How to be socially acceptable and appropriate, how to treat your bad friends, how to deal with increasing amount of questions like “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”, how to deal with depression and so on.

Now, I don’t worry so much about being liked

Entering my class at first grade, I tried to chat with everyone in the class, trying to look nice and friendly. Seeing my past mistake at middle school, I want to make friends as much as I can. I laughed at the unfunniest jokes and smiled when I honestly rotted inside.

I think, the older you are, the harder a friendly, loyal relationship forms. I remembered my old days in primary school. Cool is when you are a top player in the monopoly game, rope game, or card game. It’s not that hard getting a friend. In high school, cool is when you are really a nosy person, have a lot of friends, and know every latest gossip in school. Sadly, I'm not that typical person.

Now, I realized, how hard you have tried, you still have that person who doesn’t ‘click’ with you and that’s perfectly okay. You can’t be friends with everyone. I believe there’s a person out there who perfectly designed to click with you that you haven’t met.

Good grades are not everything, is it?

Always been in top five in middle school had made me a snob. There was the moment when I underestimated the meaning of hard work and turned out, my grades collapsed. I needed such a long time to accept it. My teacher, she puts it best, “If you haven't experienced a failure before, it will make you an arrogant person. Once you fail, you will be really sad and broke because you haven't endured it before.”

Nevertheless, having bad grades taught me not to take things for granted. At first, I got really really depressed when my grades were going down. I skipped school so many times. My brain whispered to my fragile logic “you need mental health day to recover yourself” while my heart knew best it was not about my mental condition that made me skip school. It was my ignorance and denial with reality.

Grades are important, however, I want to emphasize that the more important thing is how you immerse yourself in the process of learning. I think a lot of students missed this point. Our society made us think that numbers are more prized than the process achieving the goal itself.

Finding genuine friends might be hard yet,  maybe it’s all about time

If someone asked me what is the first thing you look for in a friendship, my answer is always the same. Loyalty and honesty simply attract me. I seek deep relationship over anything. For me, genuine friends are those who become your support system, always there no matter how bad you think you are, and the ones who you are really comfortable to be yourself. The last thing I mentioned before is what I’m still struggling. Sometimes when I’m with my friends, I feel like I'm not real.

I have a love-hate relationship with small talk. I love it when it opens a broader way to discussion and deeper talk. To date, my MBTI type is INTJ, which I guess it’s kind of hard to keep up with small talk. I love deep talk that gives me those tingles on my skin, to truly cherish what I talk without the fear of being judged and ridiculed.

I told one of my good friend about this stuff. She indirectly gave me a different perspective. Maybe it’s not that I keep asking for more quality in my friends, maybe it’s just me being ungrateful. Maybe I just need more time to understand. Three years exactly are enough to understand yet it feels like I already wasted that time.

Although I do have some regret in high school, the price of getting such precious lessons are equal enough.

To end this post, here are some photos to relish the kairosclerosis feeling.

the empty class corridor

the view from the three-story building

class science two on 2015 bless event with two people missing.

31 of 33.

*kairosclerosis

n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.

-taken from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig