Emily Yang (11) | STAFF REPORTER
2:30 am.
Turning from the clock, I sighed at the open mess of a suitcase before me. I had started packing at around midnight.
This is going to take forever.
With a deep breath into the depths of my chest, I sank down into the armchair by my bed. My room had my things strewn all over. I had flipped it pretty much entirely inside out, trying to pack. Resting my head on the back of the chair and allowing my eyes to close, I tried to recall the chaotic series of events that led me here to this moment. Like a reel of film, fuzzy images tinted with emotion began playing behind my eyes.
Two months ago, I received the last of my college acceptance letters. I sat in this very chair, a weighty stack of envelopes clutched with both my hands, with a growing anxiety that gnawed at my chest. At that point, I had already lost the desire to go to college completely. College, right now, would simply narrow my array of possibilities, close a multitude of doors. My life would be definitive, I would end up like every other kid out there. Changing my mind would then come at a great cost, both in money and time. It didn’t make sense that I should do any of that to myself.
Nothing made sense. That’s why I was leaving.
It hit me. I was leaving. I was actually leaving, getting away from this wretched town, going into the world. It was funny how that was probably the exact thought going through every other high school graduate’s head. Going to college didn’t comprise going into the “real world”. It was just another school. These kids were just more names, registered into an institution whose rules would dictate how they would spend their time each and every day. They would still have to abide by someone else’s will; doing things against their own. It was no different from high school. Opening my eyes and lifting my head to face my room, I took it all in. My bedroom, with all its decor and quirks that embodied me. My childhood. The wall of polaroid photos from last summer. The muted sage green color of the walls, memories of painting it with my dad when we moved in overtop the insufferable red left behind by the previous owners. My mom’s face framed next to mine on my shelves next to my books. My books. My hundreds of books filling up this room, inhabiting not only the shelf, but my nightstand, my desktop, inside drawers, and when I had run out of space, piled on the floor by my bed. I would have to take some with me. But how? They were heavy, they took up space, and I could never pick just a few out of my selection. I would deal with that conundrum later. I got up and stepped over the clutter on the ground to get back over to the open suitcase. I grabbed the toiletry bag I had packed up earlier and shoved it into my battered carry on. Quietly, as to avoid waking up my slumbering family.
