High School Stories

High school seemed so long ago. I always think back with fondness. 

The misty watercoloured days of simpler worries. 

It was a preview of days to come, but we were still untouched, bathed in the golden light of youth. We had our lives stretched out in front of us. There were possibilities, and dreams and ideas of things to come, of things that would be. 

That was the beauty about high school. 

We were still learning to walk, we had yet to soar. We had only had previews of life so far, our innocence was still mostly intact. 

For some reason our grade seemed to be float in our own little bubble. There wasn’t much in the way of cliques. Everyone was pretty laidback, there were few major affections, and we were a grade, not our separate groups. 

Life hit after high school. 

It’s always a shock. 

We realize that things may not always go the way we want them to. Our hopes and dreams are sometimes put on hold, or deemed unrealistic. We lose touch, we keep in touch. Some of us drifted apart, and some bonded closer. Some, regardless of time and distance, stayed exactly the same. 

There was the first marriage from our grade, and I rejoiced for them. It made it seem so real, the fact that we were finally labeled as ‘grown up’. I never thought it would be him, the laughing, naïve boy of a thousand jokes, but it was, and I was happy for him. 

There was the mass shift from studies into the working world, and everyone seems successful, and busy, with career in their eyes and business in their smile, and work seems to have scattered us throughout the countries in the world, from China to the States, Singapore to Russia to Australia. 

There was the first death, unfortunately the first of many. There were four that I could count after high school, and it reminded me that life was fleeting and God could choose to take our lives at any point of time, if it was His wish. Snatched, in the prime of youth, or to see things in a more positive way, returned to our Maker. 

Another one of us passed away yesterday. A soldier, and the news reached me hours after it had happened. I barely knew him, and yet, I felt that sense of loss. It’s strange, that I feel connected to total strangers just because we shared a particular phase in our lives. 

But I do. 

Inna lillah.