It’s probably important for you to know that my writing here is not exactly the beginning of a story so much as it is the ending of another. A chapter of my life that was confused, angry and insecure. Alas, this is the story of turning from one page to another, reciting the last and first lines of two chapters, for every beginning is the ending of something else.

It was the summer of 2019, or perhaps it was late spring. All my classes in school were winding down to a close just as I could feel the air become warm and see the sky become clear in the way this happens every year, so it may as well have been summer. I was sitting in math class, my memory casting the room with pseudo summer sunlight. I didn’t much like it since most of the math I was learning by sophomore year was pretty useless, and to make matters worse my teacher was the kind of personality who spoke with that plastic happiness voice and probably owned a “live laugh love” decoration; in fact she might have actually had one in her class, but this is all beside the point. I was in the back of the class across from the row of windows on the third floor. Through the windows I could see the sky clear and blue, because as I mentioned this was when summer had reclaimed the world from spring. It is at this time some office TA walked in with a few papers for the teacher. This was nothing unusual, papers came from the office all the time and were usually pretty mundane. However, on this special instance, they brought in something addressed for me. My painfully perky teacher carried the papers across the classroom and delivered them to my desk with yet another even greater surprise. My unexpected mail had come to me with such an audacious word written upon it. A word that carried memories of loneliness and murmurs of anger that only I knew: AVID.

It was an application form to join the AVID program at my high school. Thoughts that were etched and echoed in my mind since eighth grade sounded at its presence. It had been two years since I left the course. For so long I had dwelled on that class that I don’t know where to start to communicate why I hated it, even now. It was meant to be a college readiness class, but the biggest lesson I learned was that the loneliest you will ever feel is in a group, and I thought I could, that had to, conquer life alone. I could spend a thousand words describing what it’s like to stand alone in a class discussion, my mind aflame with what my classmates may think of me for what I said. Cornered in the classroom. I debated the guest speakers who came to tell us what to think about social justice. No one spoke to agree with me. My peers stared at me in silence. Why? Did they just have nothing to say or did they think I was some delusional right wing bigot? It’s probably the latter I told myself. I was alone. Cornered by a horde of silent stares. The only voices I heard were ones that spoke to disagree, respectfully, but my mind told me I was surrounded by hostiles. It’s easy to think like that when no one sides with you, when it’s only your voice and the voice of your anxieties. I don’t mind saying an unpopular opinion, but I hate being alone doing it. I still carry that instinct like a scar, and only overcome it by fearing the regret of staying silent more. Hell, I’m worried of what people might think of me and my beliefs based on what I wrote here, but that’s just my anxiety talking and I’ve learned to stop listening to it. I could spend a thousand more words describing the nights I found myself in existential dread that I would become a pawn in someone else’s game of chess. Crying into my pillow in my small room. Alone as usual. This time I was passed up on being selected to be a classroom tutor. Thought I didn’t care about it. A teacher made a big deal that those that were selected were true class leaders. Turns out I did. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but I carried my thoughts alone, and came to conclude that I must not be a leader, and if I wasn’t a leader what was I? A pawn. That’s what devastated me. Being a worthless pawn; and there wasn’t anyone to tell me otherwise, not that I ever asked. In my tears I decided that if I would be a pawn, I would be my own pawn, in my own game. I thought I didn’t need anyone else in order to come to terms with how I didn’t have anyone else. It’s easy to think like that when you’re alone. I have a thousand words for all the fragments of memories shot and buried in my mind like shrapnel. But I think you can get the gist of it, and I need to move on to tell the rest of this story just like I needed to move on back then. 

For those two years since then I fantasized about some vague undefined impractical climax I would have with AVID. Wouldn’t anybody after all that? And finally, it had returned, like a ghost from a hero’s past. Finally, I had something to vent my frustration at, and have a triumphant resolution. I stared down the sheets of paper on my desk, wondering how to exact my revenge and finally have my peace. But in the greatest irony, I found I had no passion left to give. Those fantasies of some great conclusion were all just fantasies in my head that could never be realized. I never knew what they’d look like, and now I knew I never would. Although I still carried scars and insecurities wherever I went, the wounds had worn with time. That year in eighth grade had burned me and I refused to let go out of spite, until now when the flame turned to charcoal, and all I had left was cold ash gripped in my hand and mundane sheets of paper on my desk.

I took the packet home with me and left it in my room. For the final weeks in school I thought in the back of my mind about what to do with it; with some semblance of stoicism rather than hate. I decided to fill out the application, writing into it all my unresolved pain from my mind, and then burn it. Seemed like the right thing to do. My family was planning to have a trip up to Birch Bay the day school got out. We would leave as soon as I got home. I knew there was a large fire pit in the back of the RV park we were going to stay at. It was located in a clearing reserved for auxiliary campsites in case the main sites were all taken, so there was a good chance no one else would be there and I could have the fire ring to myself.

The sky was clear and the air was calm on the early summer afternoon when we got to the park. My parents had gone to check in at the park office and my siblings were watching TV in our RV. I told them I was going on a walk, I didn’t care to specify the details and they didn’t care to know. In my pocket I carried the papers, a pen and matches. I trekked somberly along the gravel road that softly crunched with each step. The heat and frenzy of summer was yet to begin so the park was mostly empty and quiet, complimented by the tame and warm atmosphere that would bring peace to anyone’s mind. I entered into the clearing of grass and gravel surrounded by a faint line of trees, empty save for a set of benches around the fire ring. Kneeling before the great bowl ash and charcoal I made my final goodbyes to my scars. I read over every cynical comment I had to say to AVID that I wrote in the application packet, wrote my final notes to articulate my experience and with a calm enlightened mind I made my final judgement: it is rare that I feel as alone as I did in AVID, even writing this now I can’t say I can at all appreciate it, but I was a fool to think I should make the best of isolation and cling onto having no one but myself. Everyone needs a people. I couldn’t stay alone forever. I had to get better. I needed to find a people to belong with. And with that I let the packet gently burn away and dissolve into the preexisting mound of ash of that fire pit.    

I watched my past pain fade, and contemplated my future. I’ve never considered myself religious, but if I had to describe what I did next I’d say it was something of a prayer. To myself, or to the fire pit, I don’t really know. I knew now I had to find a people, and so I wished for something that only a lowly 16 year old could: a girlfriend. Not out of pubescent lust, at least not entirely, but because above all else I needed someone who would stand with me against all the cruelty of the world, and I needed some goal to move towards to move on from AVID. I knew where I was going now, I had a direction to take. The moment came and went on the stoic summer afternoon. I walked away from those ashes, from my past, and forward towards the rest of my life. My mind like that day was calm, bright and hopeful. It was the beginning of the summer of 2019.