In Highschool. In College. In Life. Sally-Mae Herford
In high school, looking back on the person I was; I confess, I barely recognised her. I genuinely believe most of us can sympathize that our high school years were our peek. I remember my grandmother telling me at the very impressionable age of eighteen, “oh Sally! You must get some professional photos taken of you; you’ll never be this pretty again.” As much as her comment will forever be a contributor to my deteriorating self-confidence, she had a point. In high school, much like Jack on the Titanic, you feel on top of the world, having survived tedious exams, unhealthy relationships, hormonal acne, friendship dramas and finally graduated, with still no real responsibilities for anyone but yourself. And then, you start applying for degrees or start your first job and slowly begin fading into the next phase of your life almost seamlessly. In college, a year down the road you begin to miss the early morning roll calls, waiting in line at the canteen, catching the bus with friends, the weekend sleepovers and the after school Maccas trips. This new phase holds a multitude of new experiences that now come with a lot more freedom. You realise you don’t have to get up for every early morning class if you don’t want to, you buy things that you’ve earnt with your own money, you no longer have to catch a bus or wait for your parents to pick you up, overprotective parents don’t need to know where you are every second and you start to realise the effects Maccas has on your body and decide to switch to the healthier choice, Subway. Granted these things are just the trivial surface issues, the top layer of ice covering a growing deepness, the outward exterior to keep up appearances. Physically you are growing, learning, experiencing but mentally you’re hurting, loving, and hating differently too. You become so much more aware of the ripple effects of your actions and how you have the power to change the lives around you. Sometimes what I miss the most about my high school years is the admissible selfishness. There you were at the centre of the universe, you were the main character, and everyone else was merely extras, sipping coffee and filling empty spaces in the background, your friends were the co-stars to the feature film that was your life. But now, you’ve started to realise that each person 28
the voice
you come across is living a different life as full and vivid as your own and you begin paying attention to those lives, you laugh because they laugh, you hate what they hate, you love what they love, and you hurt cause they’re hurting. Not in a conformist kind of way, but in the way that you deeply care about these people enough to invest your fears, triumphs and loves in them knowing they have been through the same emotions and would do the same for you. You start to learn from other people’s mistakes around you and realise the advice you were given as a child actually held familiar merit. However, you still go ahead and make those mistakes again and again, just in case they happen to work the next time. In life, it is a terribly beautiful and painful thing, growing up, exposing your anxieties and weaknesses to the world, realising that you may be the background character in someone else’s life. And that it’s okay to be the co-star every once in a while. You can be the friend that sends the ‘are you okay’ text, the one who always shows up when someone needs compassion or simply the hype person in the background filling in space. As long as you remember that you are the main character in your story. It’s difficult reminding yourself of that every day. Yes, there will be many days that you don’t remember, but then those days will always be followed by magnificent sunsets, by someone remembering your coffee order, a positive reply to that risky text, a perfectly ripe avocado, or even an unsolicited hug from mum. The Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, Rainer Maria Rilke writes on these idyllic phases of adolescent life in his poem ‘Go to the Limits of Your Longing’ saying, ‘let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final.’
