Sorry for not posting in forever! Graduation is coming up in three weeks (!!!) which is more than a little terrifying, and one of my qualms is that I have an inability to sit still for so long. It's going to be about three hours! Talk about ants in your pants.
That being said, as much as I know I won't be able to do this, I thought I would write a little graduation speech for the occasion. I won't be able to go up and say anything, since I'm not in line for valedictorian (about forty spaces below that), but I thought I would just give my thoughts on the subject. Just for funzies, I guess.
Expect this to be a very, very rough draft.
***
I know very little about graduation speeches. I'll be the first to admit that. But what I've noticed is that every commencement speech starts off with some kind of metaphor or saying or some such, and often times, it's about fish. So I guess I'll start with that.
So two fish are swimming along in the ocean, side-by-side, among all of the other fish and beings in the ocean. It's a day like no other; their school swims along fast, everything's totally normal. And the first fish looks to the second and says:
". . . wait a second, you're a HORSE. What are you doing here??"
*waiting for potential laughter to come down*
It seems like the strangest allegory ever, right? But the both scary and reassuring fact is that it's really true. I have felt like a horse in a school of fish. I'm sure everyone has felt like a horse in a school of fish. Entirely, illogically out of place. Surrounded by more normal and expected fish, occasionally interrupted by the special jellyfish that sometimes come to play, hiding with the others when the scary sharks come along and threaten to try and pull off your face. And as the horse, it seems like all of the sharks come after you.
It's the same way in high school. I've always felt like the odd one out. Surrounded by a bunch of totally normal students, along with some of those really cool kids I admired from afar but could barely go and talk to. I never felt like I was part of a group, and if I did, I continued to feel like the strange horse. When I was younger, these facts often sent me to my room after school, crying. I remember third and fourth grades being really hard for me, because I can remember getting off the bus and going inside and running to my room and tossing myself onto my bed in tears. In many ways, that hasn't changed; I've just more easily accepted it.
But I don't think I'm alone. I think that many of us in high school have felt that way. The star athletes. The art kids. The popular girls. The video gamers. The anime dweebs - which I mean in a loving way, because I used to be one of those dweebs. But I digress. I think no matter what "clique" or lack thereof that you fit into, I think the feeling of a horse in with the fish is a universal feeling. We feel left out. An eyesore. An abnormality.
It's taken me a long time - and it will take me even longer to accept it more - to realize that we all feel like that. All of us. There's this great quote by Steve Furtick that I discovered earlier this school year, and it goes like this: "The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel." *pause* Of course, I thought when I saw it. Of course. I have privately suffered with anxiety and fear and secrets I simply wanted to come out with, and when I compared those problems to those around me, it made me feel like the horse. Awkward and ungraceful among a sea of fish. But all the while, I was just seeing the highlight reels of others - what seemed to make them fish.
I think high school, unfortunately, does a fair bit to promote some of that thought, that you're somehow abnormal. Kids leave other kids out of their social cliques, somebody's bad mood is taken out on you, and suddenly you're eating alone at lunch wondering why you're so uncool. But you're not. It's a product of all of the crap going on around you, everybody else's private issues. It makes us all horses.
Despite this - that high school leads to our privatized feelings of abnormality - high school has its perks, too. Those teachers that notice when you have a bad day. The school nurses that hold so much more respect for you than you think you deserve. Those kids who see you as the jellyfish, the cool ones, even if you can't understand why. No man is an island, and I think high school is a great way to realize that. And if you are an island, well, at least you have some handy bridges built. And learning how to construct those bridges between yourself and others is better in the long gallop.
I know that so much of this speech has been spent talking about animals, and insecurity, and so little about school and what it's done for us. But that's because I know - know - we will all understand someday how much school matters, even if not right now. But this - this is what we've been working with. Horses and fish and jellyfish and bridges. Those are the things we have worked with over time; those are what have continued to make us strong. Realizing that we're all swimming horses makes the journey easier, and we need that reassurance as, now, we leave the reef and float into the big, blue sea.
So thank you. Thank you, all of you glorious horses, for helping me realize what you are - what all of us are. And hey, if we find each other someday, maybe we can have a race. No matter who wins, crossing that finish line will just serve to remind us of all of the things that got us here, the good and the bad. And that's what matters in the end.
Thank you.
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