I wish.
God, it breaks my heart, seriously (not literally) that tomorrow will be the last regular class day I spend in the
Okay, well, we might still have around a month more before grad but tomorrow will be the last actual day that we spend, slaving away at equations, burning up in the softball dugout (a badly landscaped football field but a softball dugout nonetheless), listening to Sir Anthony rave about literature (God, this breaks my heart so much.) and all the Monday things we do in school. It's just so hard to say goodbye to something that you've been so used to for the past few years. It's so hard to let go and begin to part with a place you've called home for what felt like a tiny bit of eternity for a while.
It just hurts so much that suddenly, somebody just pulls the cord on all that stuff.
I am not a sentimental person. I don't cry easily and I'm not the type reminisce things for the purpose of intended masochism. But it just began to sink in earlier tonight that Ateneo has been to me what no place has ever been. I can't even call it a home because it's been a lot more than that to me.
It's where I learned that I could belong. People used to be so quick to judge before I met people at AdI. I mean, There was just so much tension, so much having to conform, so much hate and jealousy in my life before that I thought I'd always just be an outcast with friends that I'd have to lose in the end. But here, I met people who don't care if you like going hahahahehehehehihihihyperventilate over your favorite things because they know that despite how annoying you'd seem, they'd also have those moments too. This is where I felt like there was absolutely no judgment to people who seem like the 'brains' of the class or whatever. AdI is where I felt like I could trust. I could hand someone my secret and turn my back, knowing they'd take it with them to their grave.
I learned to love (literature, that is) Actually, this is what started my entire sadness trip tonight. I just thought about how tomorrow would be our last meeting with Sir Anthony in formal classes and I swear by all the authors he's quoted that the thought of it smashed my itty-bitty heart to pieces. I love literature now and I have to admit I am a literature noob. But AdI just has this thing for literature that takes you on a love trip. Eloquentia et Sapientia if I may cheesily quote. But really, it's been a love affair between me and literature ever since I laid my hands on The Raven. Add in Sir Anthony's careful and passionate dissection of To Kill and Mockingbird and Ma'am A's swoon-worthy reading of that other version of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and god, the projects--the heart-wrenchingly difficult, shame-killing projects that force us to literally take on characters and actually live out a story. I feel like shedding tears right now. Literally just because of how much I'll miss English classes in AdI. I'd be lost without literature right now and I owe it all to AdI, I guess.
It's home. Cheesy as it might be, my classmates can attest to the fact that our classroom has literally and figuratively become home, truly. It's where you can sleep without getting yelled at, eat and still have someone pass you more food, bicker and still have a hug at the end of the day, cry and have someone to hold you and tell you things will be alright, tell cheesy jokes and still get a good laugh, announce that you need to take a shit and never get judged, fart and be identified and cast out (and still be welcomed after the stench is gone). I'll be with my friends after tomorrow, for sure. But it'll be a whole different thing. What comes after exam week is graduation prep. No more homework cramming, no more food hiding, no more side comments to be snide about in class. It'll just be... different.
Separation anxiety is kicking in, most definitely. It's melting the Ice Queen that's always been me and it's just ripping my heart out again and again and again. I just can't believe things are about to end. I dare not say that I cried writing this but I dare not deny it either. It's a long hell of a process that feels so quick and so evasive when we actually try to find our footing in it. For sure, AdI wasn't perfect... but it was home. And now, I'm packing up to move.
It usually really is the packing up that gets us all sad and stuff. Like, the feeling of having to lift your stuff out of the dusty corners they've been in for a while now, remembering every story about that thing and that corner, even the stories of how it got dusty there would break your heart, trying to hold on to the pieces of those events left to you--the memories. Packing up is when you see everything get dismantled until what's left is a room physically as empty as what it was when you got there but you know in your heart that it's not as empty as it seems.
Across the empty room, you still see mirages, figments of people laughing, books thrown about, lessons being fallen asleep to, lively discussions, secret Cheetos...
I should stop here.
Bah.
Eyes are sweating. Go away.
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