Monday, January 11, 2016

Day 11. Things You Always Think [What If] About

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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