*Disclaimer: This senior column mentions eating disorders.
Coming up with an opening sentence for a senior column when you’ve had such an inconsequential (yet consequential) high school career feels like trying to come up with a good one-liner. Except you’re at the king’s court, knowing that you can’t screw up or he’ll sell your firstborn child to Rumpelstiltskin. Or like you’re Murr and the other impractical jokers just dared you to perform a particularly offensive task.
Mentally, I’ve already written one out of various passing thoughts I failed to catch on time, but I’m currently grieving the removal of dekopon citruses from Whole Foods, and I can’t be bothered to get into the 18th-century old man writing persona I usually utilize to write fanfiction, and I can’t see this get any kudos on Archive of our Own anyway, so here’s another column written by yet another washed-up senior.
Because of that, every sentence following going to sound similar to a Marvel character saying, “Well that just happened,” after Tony Stark does NOTHING to stop the destruction of town homes (a real critique I’ve received). Now that my inability to identify a sense of self has been hinted at, it’s safe to acknowledge that it’s SO over.
On all technicalities, I didn’t experience anything life-changing throughout my high school career, nor did I do anything groundbreaking. Not in a self-deprecating way, I just never went through the character arc of having the entire school depend on you, a sophomore quarterback, to win the homecoming game. I didn’t get to experience the highs and lows of high school football, and to be honest, I don’t think I’d have the plot armor for that anyway.
That’s a lie to reassure myself that my life is ideal because I did experience my fair share of fumbles this year, more than any other. Things like being mentally exhausted all the time because you relapsed into your eating disorder amongst other mental health problems, and getting too into Haruki Murakami books, are things I experienced but would never tell anyone in fear that it would shatter the perception of myself I’ve deemed presentable enough. Confronting them by immortalizing them online scares me, but bringing up discrepancies is a necessary cause I’m willing to bet on.
High school paints itself as an endless landscape of opportunities, and it’s okay if it ends up being fruitless. It’s the decisive stepping stone between middle school and college, where you see the people you went to elementary school with develop and drift apart from each other, and where you see people cosplaying Pitbull.
For me, high school was a whole “the ends justify the means situation”, where any troubles I went through in those 4 years would be justified as long as my end adhered to the future I envisioned for myself. Evidently so, being a roll-with-the-punches type of person did not work out in my case. What I’m trying to get at is that I’ve always felt some self-imposed duty to justify my failures, which leads to questionable coping mechanisms like writing about your interests when things don’t go as planned. Because hey, if nobody got me, I know Vash the Stampede does.
In many ways, I feel more inclined to associate myself with my freshman self than with the person I currently am, out of regret. The me who accidentally said the phrase “get cucked” into the band Google Meets because I forgot I was unmuted after forcing all of my classmates to watch the MV to “As You Like It” by Eve seems more familiar than the me who almost got me hospitalized had I not been entered into recovery by my parents. My disordered self actively allowed me to have control over the type of person I was, so no matter how much I hurt, I was happy to be falling apart.
Funnily enough, here’s the part where my interests strike again. The manga “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness” by Kabi Nagata propelled me into the recovery process as it made me feel less alone, as any sort of eating disorder is often stigmatized by society.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully express how grateful I am for my parents not wanting to slowly see me harm myself in a society where not eating has been turned into a flex. I’m not fully recovered, but as long as there’s a will, there’s a way, everyone is entitled to recovery. So while recovery feels horrifying at times, we keep balling.
I’m becoming like those people who hold on to the summer of 2016 to deal with the fact that the future freaks me out and that everything will collide with time. Who knows, maybe four years from now I’ll get hit with the realization I chose to publicly put this online at a darty “Akira leave me alone” style.
Although I was only on the publication for a school year, being able to share my interests with others publicly was an opportunity I’m glad I took. And now it’s allowed me to share my inner self. Every article I’ve written for this publication is a love letter belonging to past and future paradigms that represent both my hope that the arts and entertainment category continues acting as a vessel of self-expression for future staff reporters and hopefully act as something my younger self could be proud of.
Shout out to 42Fifty for allowing me to permanently have the fact that I’m severely chronically online attached to my digital footprint for the rest of my life. Which is fire because I can have future employers think I am cool and awesome (hopefully) while also being a mildly pathetic person whose interests are their sole guiding principle in life.
Consequently, after 7 publishing cycles, I’ve found an inkling of who I am: a natural-born yapper with a penchant for references. I’m not 100% sold on it, I may decide becoming a wandering salesman is a better fit for me in the future. But it feels right for now and that’s all that matters.
I’ve already waffled on long enough, so stay cringe, but most importantly, stay silly.
42Fiftys very own post-niche internet micro-ecelebrity (mid geoguesser player) that lived through a chronic gas leak that was going on in their house for a little over a year without their knowledge. Their only qualification is that they bring a silly goose vibe to the geese party.
