by William Vicson Gocheco (Grade 10 – Luna)
Art by Pauline Abigail Mandalupe (Grade 6 – Zhang Heng)
It’s a cold dark Monday morning. The sun has barely come up. I feel the urge to pee. Why am I even awake at this time? Oh right, school. I take a shower and eat breakfast like any other person. By the time I finish it’s a beautiful sunny day and I am excited to go to school. The camping trip was fast approaching. Finally, some fun. A break from all the stress. Alas, young me was too naïve.
No one could have foreseen it would last this long and be this serious. Wasn’t it a rumor just a few weeks ago? This was almost two years ago when staying at home all day was the best thing that ever happened to me. Of course, now we take it as a fact as if it had always been this way.
Some people highlight high school as one of the most fun times of their lives. It’s a shame I couldn’t really do anything this past year. This was supposed to be the time when people went out with their friends and had fun. Now, it feels like a slow march into oblivion. It feels like I just graduated from elementary not too long ago and all of a sudden, I am supposed to pick what to take in senior high.
The feeling of being stuck never came so clearly until now. I’ve answered thousands of questions, hundreds of quizzes and woken up hundreds of times in the same bed only to go to the same chair with the same computer and the same spot. While the world has spun around hundreds of times, I am still here and haven’t gone anywhere.
But for some unknown reason, I keep going. Unrealistic expectations? Maybe. Irrational belief? Probably. Unfounded hope? Definitely. Some days are tough. When days are long, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t fazed. But I refuse to stop. There is something that moves us out of bed every single day. Some je ne sais quoi. It is something that we all have and must never let go.