Soft Spot

Happy last-day-of-school-in-2022! It's still weird that we mark time like that, isn't it? I think we officially hit one year of this blog a couple weeks ago, which got me thinking about how writing into the void that is the internet has become one my more surefire coping mechanisms. Even though I know Jessica reads everything I write (something I still do not condone, by the way), I'm somehow never scared of revealing my darkest truths here.

And that got me thinking about how, to quote Taylor Swift, we're all just discoballs, changing our shapes to fit the mold, reflecting the light of everyone else in our lives. I still remember that incredibly corny episode of Girl Meets World, during which Cory Matthews teaches Maya, Riley, Lucas, and Farkle that the secret to life is this: people change people. It's true, if a little simplistic, but its implications are heavy -- if we change our personality for each person in our life, then who are we really? Which version is more us than the others? 

I skipped my first hour class today to walk around the hallways with one of my best friends. We gossipped about everyone in our lives, making fun and stopping occasionally to admire the traveling classes of carolers. We became those carolers in third hour, belting Alvero Soler songs into a microphone, egregiously out of tune. I ditched my sixth hour movie watching session to play the kazoo with a friend, wandering the hallways and wreaking havoc like us seniors ought to do. I was accused of acting drunk four times, mostly because I burst out laughing over a stack of paper plates, and then I starred in a music video for the only Christmas song with rights. It was the last day before Christmas Break I'll ever have in this high school. Maybe that's why it was so bittersweet. 

Because for as long as I can remember, I've been the winner of card games only five other people know how to play. I've been an expert at discerning the "Troy High Asian" from the "IA Asian". I've found the secret stairwells that make this place feel like Hogwarts. I've stuck a pencil in a hole in the wall at my old middle school, and sometimes go back to find it just to make sure it's still there. I don't know who I am without this place, but next Christmas I will.

If that's a good thing or not, I guess I'll let you know. But for now, Merry Christmas. May every day of 2023 be the most supreme romanticized day yet.