Monday, December 14, 2009

365 Days

It's strange to think back to where I was exactly one year ago. The fourteenth of December: my parents had already sent out the moving vans (which, unfortunately, arrived in Holden the evening of the ice storm) and now, it being 6:00PM on a Sunday evening with the apparent possibility of school the following day (in retrospect.....yah no), I was scooped up from my best friend's house and unwillingly shuttled two hours north to my new "home." Luckily school was cancelled until the new year, and so I passed the vacation time exploring these new, foreign mazes of streets and the labyrinth that was a new highway system, a new town center, a new city. Everything was new, different, unfamiliar.

It's a funny thing about "new"--materialistically we crave untouched, unspoiled perfection. With change, though, we cower in fear. I don't excuse myself from this generalization; I'd be lying if I did. My first day of school at Wachusett was absolutely dreadful. Nothing at all horrible happened. But what made it so incredibly painful was that nothing happened. I came to school, I walked, lost, down the hallways, I entered classrooms, took my seat--once or twice realizing that the cryptic writing on the board was not, indeed, math but was instead (for some inexplicable and cruel reason) Spanish--and come lunchtime I would have completely dissolved into the tiled lineoleum floors had it not been for the wonderfully-cheerful junior in my pre-calc class who let me sit with her and thus performed one of the greatest acts of kindness ever known to man or, at the very least, to me.

My very first friend here is now my best friend. I am lucky in that fact, extraordinarily so. She is clever, beautiful, talented, funny, charming, and sweet beyond words. The few friends I made in the following weeks were all so different, so unbelievably singular in everything they did and said and conveyed, and every day I would marvel at the variety of people I met. I would sit at lunch, in classrooms, at drama rehearsal--I would sit and watch these humans, these beautiful humans who were kind enough to invite me in. They carved a little place for me in their lives. One day I will thank them formally.

I don't think we thank people enough, myself included.

Thank you to my first friend, and my second one as well.
Thank you to the boy who needed me to run lines with him and shyly asked me to help and actually remembered my name so that he could talk to me at lunch, and thank you to him for becoming my best boy friend.
Thanks to Mr. McTigue for pairing me up with one of the most intelligent, gorgeous, and spirited girls I have ever met. He probably has no idea, but he introduced me to my other best friend that day.
Thank you to the oboe player that willingly corresponded with me before I even moved here.
Thank you to the girl with two first names, for giggling with me and always checking in.
Thank you to the boy, the boy who is so completely comfortable with who he is, for accompanying me to prahm, and for forgetting the past and sharing an enlightening present.

There will never be enough thank yous, and surely I've missed people.
One day I'll fill in all the blanks.
I promise.

2 comments:

  1. i cried... i'm a sap, but i'm honored to be in your life and to be your friend.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dramaski+prahski -> Friendskis!

    I'm glad you are here with us and me.

    ReplyDelete