Things
I Always Think [What If] About
There are certain things that didn’t happen the things it
was supposed to be. Sometimes, I still have the thought of changing it somehow.
What if I could turn it around? Would it change anything or would it rather
stay the same?
On top of that, one of the things that had always been on
my mind is that what if I didn’t write that letter? I know that this one is
supposed to lie in the past and there would ever be any reason to talk about it
again.
Back in grade 10, my homeroom teacher taught physics. I
was never good at physics nor math nor chemistry. In fact, I sucked. I never
intended to be good at something that was clearly not meant for me to be good
at my whole life. I didn’t go to her classes after school because why anyway?
As a teacher, you should have taught in class everything you were supposed to
rather than turning it into some kind of money-making business called “after
school classes”. I never intended to take her class. My grade wasn’t good
because she didn’t taught me how to do those exercise in class. People might
choose not to believe this but if you were in my shoes, you would have felt the
same way I felt - how horrible it was to sit in a class where everyone was
supposed to study the same thing, but no, it was far too different.
One day, she got too upset cause we, her students, were
getting bad grades. She thought that it must be her fault somehow. I thanked
God a thousand times cause at least, she knew that there was something wrong
about her teaching. However, she was too blind to see the truth hidden behind
her wealth. She asked the whole class to write her a letter, telling her our
thoughts, our own opinions so that she would know what was wrong with her,
mostly, with her class.
Back then, I was such an arrogant kid. I was fifteen at
that time. I thought to myself that it was in fact a good chance to let her
know the truth. Therefore, I wrote her a letter with all the ugly truth she
should have seen a long time ago. She was quite shocked to read that although
she pretended that she was fine. Well, she was definitely not. She did try to
hide it pretty well provided the fact that she pretended not to know who wrote
that letter.
A few weeks later, she noticed that my grade in
literature had dropped. I was not good at literature either because Vietnamese
literature (I’m talking about how the subject was taught) was fucking stupid.
Even now, I’m still a better literature student than most of my high school acquaintances.
I got a five at that time. She used my grade against me. She didn’t say my name
out loud but she mentioned how I was so good at writing such a letter to my
homeroom teacher but instead got a five on my literature test.
I was frozen. I didn’t know how I should react. I did
have the thought of crashing her bike on the way home. Instead, I chose to keep
quiet. I was already leaning toward being a loner, an introvert at that time.
It soon became my own path. To think back about high school, still, sometimes
there are nightmares. High school was a tough time for me, a lifelong lesson
that I had to learn at such a young age. A lesson that changes who I am
supposed to be is too painful. It haunts me often when I feel stressed. It
scares me every time I dream about going back to school. I was so thankful to
wake up in bed and try to calm myself for one thing “High school has ended, a
long time ago.”
What if I didn’t write that letter?
Though I have to admit that writing that letter is the
biggest mistake I made, how would my life change the other way? I wouldn’t
become an introvert. I might have made some friends, or even a lot of friends.
High school might be a precious memory like everybody’s else. I would choose a
different path to go in my life. I might have been to a different college,
study a different major and meet someone different. I don’t know.
I love how my life turns out to be. The reason that I
still have the thought of “what if” is because I was haunted by my past. High
school has always been a nightmare. Somehow, I just want to change it a little
bit so that I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night, crying alone
cause I thought that I was going back to high school.
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