Monday, May 25, 2015

Keep Writing Your Story

     This is my last week of Sophomore year. My last week of being a homeschooler. The four years of high school do move just as quickly as everyone told me they would. "Sophomore" has been who I am for the past year, but "homeschooler" has been tagged to my identity for ten years now. It's honestly scary changing that with my Junior year being the first at public school. Of course, its not just the name itself, its the change that I've spent years contemplating but always deemed "too scary" to go through with. A courageous act in my own personal book; an account of all the sentences written to lead to that book being filled so that I now start a new one.

     The first sentence probably read "Go to Sea world", a glorious ink stain to be scripted on that scary blank white page. "Learn to hold a conversation" takes up a whole page in the middle, and took painstakingly long to meticulously write. The book ends with "learn to tie a balloon", "get rid of my security blanket (Long hair)", and "let people know more about me" scrawled on the bottom of the back cover. I didn't end up with a half filled notebook to be placed back on the shelf for years, I scribbled down all the things that make me uncomfortable and did them until I could take a thick black marker and let it glide through those words without a second of hesitation knowing "I did it and now this is part of my new comfort zone."

     I did not let my little match box stay a match box, it grew to a jewelry box, then a box the size of my bass drum. Eventually it became a house big enough for me to let people walk inside so I can share a piece of my guarded thoughts without fear of the chandelier pulled down or fine jewelry collection stolen. If I stop getting out of my comfort zone, I stop growing. If I stop growing, I stop living. If I stop living... Well, I might as well be dead and rest with the fact that my little match box never even became big enough for a coffin. If I stop filling book after book with things that make me uncomfortable then crossing them out like the names of forgotten childhood crushes drawn on the inside of a bunk bed, I stop turning the pages. I stop starting new books to expand the gorgeous library. I can not keep my bookmark in the middle of Sophomore year and I will not keep it in Public School, Crazy Rock Concert, Moving out. or Losing a Friend. I do not determine whether my life is a trilogy, or fills a massive bookshelf. I do determine how many pages are blank, and if I re-read all the old ones or keeping writing when my hands cramp or I miss that story of looking at the stars with my best guy friend.

     I can not tell if these are the last words I write in my book, I never know when my pen will run out of ink. But if I have enough to victoriously close shut Sophomore Year and start Summer 2015 I sure hope I can fill every page of it with nights star gazing with the people I love most, every kind word breathed out by friends brought closer, and drips of every tie dye shirt I make with rock'n'roll music playing in the back ground. I hope to cross off with that black sharpie "Rock climbing" and "Meet new people." May I, and may you; never stop growing, turning the pages,
and never
ever
stop writing our stories.

( It's almost 1 AM and I'm writing Algebra 2 vocabulary words. There's probably a lot of grammar mistakes in this, but it's finals weeks and I want all of this out. )

No comments:

Post a Comment