I have been sitting on this post for 8 months. I have tried writing this post at least three other times, but I struggled fitting four years of high school into a 5-7 minute-read blog post. A lot happened in high school. But with the COVID-19 pandemic uprooting everyone’s lives in one way or another, I figured there is no better time than to write about longing. More than ever before we are all longing for something right now. Longing to go back to work. Longing to go back to school. Longing to have drinks with friends at a bar. Longing to just sit in a coffee shop and read.
Every so often on Facebook, I see the question posed: “If you could, would you relive your high school days?” Most people respond to that question with a strong “NO,” or “never in a million years.” If I am being honest with myself, I would answer yes. Overall, I had a positive experience in high school. I was always busy with one activity or the other. While I was still pretty quiet in high school, I still made many friends through sports and other activities. Especially during the school closures, as a secondary teacher, I miss the daily interactions with my high school teachers who helped foster my love of learning.
Like most people, I longed for many things in high school. I especially longed for quick fixes that I thought would make everything better.
As a freshman, I thought that getting rid of my IEP would make me feel more “normal.” At the time I thought all my teachers were watching me all the time, and I feared how my friends and peers would treat me if they found out I had a disability. In March of my freshman year, my mom and I revoked my IEP, but that didn’t satisfy the longing that I felt.
When it came to soccer and tennis, I longed to be more athletic. I always thought: if only I could run a little bit faster, if only my left side was a little bit stronger, if only I could make varsity. Out of my four years of sports in high school, my junior year soccer season was the most rewarding. I was in the best shape. I played in multiple varsity games, and I earned the “Heart of a Wildcat” award for my determination and hard work. And yet it wasn’t enough.
During high school I had braces for two years. At one of my initial appointments, the orthodontist said I had to get two teeth extracted. I cried almost every night until they were extracted. I made my parents pay for laughing gas to help me feel better about having to get them taken out. I was exhausted from feeling different and the thought of having two gaps in my teeth just added to the list of problems with my body that I could not control. Then two months before I was due to get my braces off, my dentist told me I needed to get a tooth extracted because it was “eating itself from the inside out.” Again. Something that I could not prevent. Something I could not control. This time I would have to get an implant. This time I couldn’t wait until I got home to start crying. All at once it hit me. The exhaustion I felt with the never-ending doctor’s appointments. The exhaustion I felt with the never-ending procedures to fix problems with my body that I couldn’t prevent or control. I was tired. I longed for there to be nothing else “wrong” with my body.
Lastly, I longed to get out of Indiana. While many of my friends and classmates longed to get out of South Bend, I wanted to get out of Indiana altogether. I thought that if I could just meet new people and create a new image for myself that I would feel better. When it came to colleges, the only school I applied to in Indiana was IU, and it was my last choice on the list. In December of my senior year, that longing to get out of Indiana was satisfied when I received my acceptance letter from American University in DC. After making my official decision to go to AU, I could finally relax because in eight months I would be leaving South Bend to start a new chapter 10 hours away. I started going to parties more. I started skipping classes. I finally felt like the person I wanted to be throughout high school. Finally, that general sense of longing I felt for four years had been satisfied.
Or so I thought.
“To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
a-symmetry 