by K
Saying that high school was a traumatic experience is an understatement. The natural consequence of putting in hormonal children, new to the world, eager to impress, and anxious to fit in within a confined space is a disaster. The fact that I went to a boarding school did not help. I had to face these same people every day from dawn to dusk. What’s more, there was an expectation of solidarity. That we are people with a shared experience, enduring the hardships of exams and life together hand-in-hand. We are expected to unify under many different banners: primarily that of the school emblem, then the flags of our sports houses, then the names of our batches, then the slogans of our classes. I hated every single moment of it.
The media has done a perfect job of romanticizing school life. If everyone is dumb, then surely we would all come to accept our dumbness, be friends, and make merry with each other? Surely it’ll be like a Disney movie or even a slice-of-life high school anime at worst. That can’t be further from the truth. If anything, the image of the high schooler in my mind is closer to that of William Golding’s ‘The Lord of the Flies’. They represent the rawness of the human condition. They base their interactions purely on instinct and emotion. They have yet to experience the true harshness of society.
Undoubtedly, many who read this piece would question my way of thinking. “What do you mean people get better when they enter society? Isn’t that where most people learn how harsh life is and yearn for the innocent days of high school? Where the only worry is whether they’re going to make the football team or pass their next test and not whether they’d be able to make ends meet? Whether they can put food on the table? Whether they’d have a roof over their head?” Indeed, the realities of life are much harder in the real world than in the vacuum of high school. However, my exact point is that because you understand how shitty the world is, you try to be a bit less shitty to other people. At the very least, not to their face, as you begin to recognize that society has very little patience for those who are outwardly horrible people.
Yet, if you ask me whether I’d change anything at all about my experience, I’d say no. Despite all of the horrible things I say about my experience, I will never deny my past as an essential part of my identity. It is precisely those vulgar emotions that I faced as a child that made me who I am as an adult. Every single time I feel like losing my patience with someone, I will be reminded of how things had gone wrong when I did so before. Similarly, it made me more careful and deliberate in my words and actions. It taught me how to choose who to befriend and abandon, and most importantly, when I should abandon.
Today, I don the same symbols I used to abhor with pride. Though I’ve cut off the majority of the people I met in those days, I still maintain relationships with the people I cherish. To me, they were the sole reason why I never completely broke down. If there was ever a time when I’d look back and view my memories in fondness, it is only because they were there by my side.
Hence, here I’d like to unabashedly say that I do miss high school. For all the pains and sorrows it made me face, the healing, growth, and bonds I formed after made it very much worth it.