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every day. So you might not agree with my sentiments, but I don't want to
leave. I've been at this school for 12 years, and I'm afraid to leave. I'm like
Peter Pan, just without the green tights and the power to fly (also, I'm a girl).
I don't want to grow up. I give reasons like "my mom has work" or "I have
to be here for Principal's Cup" to explain why I'm at school, but the truth
is, even without my close friends, I'm okay with staying in the classroom.
I know that when I go to college, I will miss being here so much that it
might be a physical ache. For all its past history of flying insects around the
trashcan, of the BO after a particularly hot day in PE, of people leaving food
in their desks over the weekend, I love the classroom and the memories and
emotions and people associated with it, so I want to stay in it as long as I
can, so that I won't regret not doing so in the future.
Three years ago, Mr. Swan helped me keep a letter addressed to myself.
I received it yesterday and it's weird because I don't remember writing the
letter, so it was almost like reading a letter from another stranger who knew
me very, very well. One paragraph stuck out to me because it's eerie how I
feel exactly the same now as I did three years ago. "I'm afraid that when I
grow up, I'll be a nobody, just one more person in the world doing bad by
doing nothing. I'm afraid that I won't have a future – after I go to college,
then what? I don't want to graduate. Who knows? Maybe my opinions will
change after a few years, but I'm so deathly afraid of graduating, of leaving
the safe bubble of NEHS(
實驗中學
).
What can I do if things go wrong?
Will I be strong enough to stand up again?"
It's interesting, isn't it? Three years have passed and paradoxically, so