“What team?”
I hope you said wildcats.
Don’t know this reference? Why, that would be the one-and-only, iconic line from legendary crowd-pleaser and my personal childhood favorite, High School Musical: A Disney Channel Original Movie.
Still confused? Well, I started my fall semester this week and the mild first day of school vibes on Monday had me rising a thick blue wave of nostalgia. High School Musical was a childhood staple of mine, and I walked into every school year secretly wishing it might reach the grand expectations set from the revered Disney trilogy. I never did get the tasteful cafeteria flash mob I was after (although I was a participant in multiple zombie flash mobs for my theatre department’s Halloween fundraiser. Not exactly the same thing…), or the angsty teenage romance with Zac Efron I’ve been wanting for years, but that’s never dulled my love for the iconic High School Musical movie. Or Zac Efron. Let’s be real.
Monday was easily the weirdest first day of school I’ve ever had, and if you would’ve told me nine months ago I would be beginning my sophomore year of college entirely online in the midst of a pandemic while battling POTS, I wouldn’t have believed you. Partly because there was a part of me that was truly terrified I’d never be well enough to return to school, but also partly because a pandemic? Really? No way. (Yes way, unfortunately.)
As I mentioned above, all of my classes are online this semester due to COVID-19, so the first day of school felt anticlimactic to say the least. Logging into an online seminar in the quiet of my childhood home doesn’t quite have the same effect that walking into a crowded, chatty classroom filled with new students and old friends does. As far as kickoffs for a new school year goes, this was easily the most underwhelming.
When I close my eyes, I can still remember my many ‘first days’ of elementary school. I can still smell the new Expo markers, the freshly sharpened pencils, the melting pot of scents that was the school cafeteria at lunchtime. I can still taste the Goldfish and fruit snacks that were tenderly tucked into my lunchbox, can still feel the peanut butter sandwiches on soft white bread glued to the roof of my mouth. Still, I can faintly hear the dull fog horn of the school bells, the squeals of children on the recess grounds, the rattling clatter of pencil boxes before they got worn and broken from careless use. These memories fill me with a heavy sense of warmth, and they’re the equivalent of a blanket wrapping around me on a winter night.
In these memories, I was fully healthy and able. In these memories, I ran around playgrounds and the school gym, dashing to and fro choir, orchestra, and theatre rehearsals, comfortably on my feet. Minus my senior year of high school, my time spent in primary and secondary school are mercifully untouched by chronic illness. I had not yet been knocked down by the beast that its POTS, had not yet been held back, reduced, or broken. I miss these memories more than I ever thought possible.
It’s both distressing and a relief that my life wasn’t always this way, that I didn’t always live with symptoms of some sort, with daily fatigue and discouraging limitations. These memories fill me with both grief and gratitude, with both joy and heavy sorrow. In this week’s wave of nostalgia, I find myself aching to go back for a day, for an hour, for a brisk minute in my body from before. I never thought I would ever say this, but I actually wish I could go back to public school once more, merely to bask in the ordinary that wasn’t ordinary at all.
In a way, these memories feel like a gift from my past self, an offering of respite I can return to as I move forward. These days, I find myself searching for the past in my future, trying to catch a glimpse in my reality of a life where I’m fully able and free. These memories are like a baseline I am trying to get back to, and also a reminder of how good and simple life can be.
It’s been a year since I’ve been in school, and a lot has happened since then. I’ve gotten diagnosed, I’ve spent nine months in a physical therapy program, and I’ve traveled into the crevices within me that are deep and dark and roughly jagged. Enrolling in school again, even if only online, feels like a triumphant switch from full-time patient to part-time, and it’s exciting to see a life, my life, finally building upon the rubble.
But alongside this excitement is a heavy grief of all I’ve lost. In these trying days, I know I’m not the only one who feels robbed of the college experience I wanted or planned for. I know I’m not the only one who mourns over the life changes that rippled ruthlessly through the masses this year. To those of you crying hot, angry tears over the changed plans you still can’t stomach, know that I’m crying with you. To those of you working your hardest to salvage what’s left of your school year, know that I see you and I understand. To those of you who can’t help feeling robbed or cheated of the year they worked so hard for, know that I am here, fuming right beside you.
In the wise words from High School Musical: “We’re all in this together”.
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