What is grief if not love persevering?
This right here is an eulogy to 15 years of my life, my school life, which has been glorified as the sole receiver of all my focus, hardwork, determination, time, tears, blood, sweat, tears and tears. I cannot start to explain how many tears.
There are not many things I remember as a 3 or 4-year-old, but what I do are vague memories of pleasant carelessness of childhood and extremely strong and intense memories of crying when my mother used to drop me off at school. God, do I not miss screaming for her whilst being dragged inside my classroom. Ever since day one, there have been numerous instances when I was reminded of my only responsibility of studying - when I was told that all I have to do is focus on educating myself and nothing else.
Fast forward to 15 years later, I have learnt so much. The phrase 'so much' can't even start to describe the amount of small little things along with knowledge, skills and manners that I learnt in school. And it can't also start to do justice to the amount of trauma I've gained at school. Maybe 15 more years down the lane and I won't be saying this but stuff that but there's still 15 years to go for that to happen. Talking about what I have now.. yes, let's start with something on the good side, the knowledge - oh do I have gained knowledge. I owe around 60% of the understanding which I have evolved over my childhood and teenage so far to school. Understanding of world, it's components - the good ones, the bad ones, the unimportant ones, the useless ones, the ones that give me joy, the ones that upset me - everything. The skills - this ability to express myself, to claim myself as a worthy person of this world. The manners to present myself as a person of knowledge and skills. It all binds up together into a basket of growth which has given me a space to fill with my success, love and satisfaction from and to my life. But this basket isn't clean and empty as you might expect. It is stained with poison.
I believe it is impossible to fathom the impact of those deprecating and humiliating words, moments and scenarios which occur on a daily basis in the supposed temple of education. The moments where someone's days or even months of hardwork is treated like rubbish. What is someone's determination and true efforts? We don't know them. Being bluntly honest, be it a mind game or direct disrespect, being treated as if there's no one else worse than us in the world is so disheartening and demotivating. Everyday going to school with hopes of doing something good or atleast something better than yesterday, only to have all of it crushed and be titled as dumb, careless, inattentive, sensitive, weak or any other disgraceful word you can think of. Is that how people think our morales will be boosted and we would 'enjoy' studying? Yup, there's better techniques than tormenting someone's emotions and headspace to teach them a lesson. Techniques that don't take away our self-esteem or confidence. This is the poison staining our baskets. Some people suffer from it once and learn to avoid it from then on, some suffer again and again, while some even suffer enough from the poison to give up.
Moving on from the primary boons and banes of schools, another lifelong core memory built in school is of friendship. Ah, the classic phenomenon of developing interpersonal bonds which take forms of joy, sadness, anger, love, hate, love-hate and others. For many, friends are the reason behind their presence in school - books and classes can see themselves in the closed cupboards for them. I wish I could be one of those type of students. Human relations have remained secondary for me lately as I am neither exactly fond of interactions nor good at socialization, hence I tend to float away from this dynamic. For me, the books and classes were very much on the table - always.
Nonetheless I do appreciate this factor integrating in our lives from the very start quite majorly thanks to school. The banter, the silly chit-chats, the fights - at the end of the day, they end up being rejoiced and reminisced under the dialogue, kya din the vo.
There have been moments when I felt proud of myself, of who I was - thanks to school. But there were days when insecurity and fear took over me, thanks to school. The nerves which directed me towards either the greatest disaster or a wonderful presentation were my sweet companions.
Dear school, I won't miss you but I will remind myself of the hurt and happiness I got from you. Thanks for making me the person I am. I do wonder though if 5-year ago me, or maybe even 10-year ago me would be impressed by present me. Hard to tell, but what I know is present me is not only impressed but also extremely proud of five or ten year ago me. For being her strongest self that she could have been... for being a stubborn-ass bitch who couldn't just let people walk over her. She did come off as intimidating to many, even rude but well... she was trying to figure out how growing up works just like the rest of them. I know I haven't grown up fully just yet and I am not even ready to do it to be honest but passing one of the first major stepping stones of life, I am aware that I will figure it out. So to those who tried to or are still trying to "help" me, thank you but no thank you - I think it'll be better if you leave this up to me so that if I mess up, it's on me and only me...
But if I make it - it's because of me and only me.
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