Leaving

by Sam Bryan



Nothing felt real anymore, like a badly rushed plot of a mediocre game about some kind of apocalypse, everything was moving at a thousand miles per hour around me and my circle of friends while we just sort of stood there and watched everything burn. The build up of stress had disappeared with my hopes of completing my exams and earning the sort of “rite of passage” to A-levels, the virus had completely ended everything in only a few months. Something we had laughed about in stupidly made memes about a plague but had secretly feared and simultaneously knew would never spread far had churned through the human populace using young people as vectors to reach the ends of the earth. 

Today was the last day of secondary school for us: no results day, no prom. Nothing was left. We had a measly six or seven hours to celebrate the last five to twelve years all of us had spent with each other, condensing what should be several months of emotional goodbyes into a whirlpool of tears for some to those who were leaving and a “see you next year” with an elbow bump to people staying for sixth form. Shirts were signed with a variation of generic goodbyes in vibrant sharpie that everyone reeked of by three o’clock and immature drawings to be hung on your wall until university. A large order of dominoes was ironically shared unevenly in the midst of a global pandemic during lunch while  nostalgic stories of year three crushes and football games I often lost were loudly reminisced in a hall of 100 almost grieving students, who, despite our differences seemed to be finally united in a sad celebration of our differences and memories. 

An impromptu service was given by the reverend followed by the most emotional singing of 'Jerusalem' I’ve heard since we sang it on a mountain in Spain to memorialise a climber who died recently there. Some smiled through tears because it wasn’t just a sad occasion to remember the old but to bring forth the new. A new chapter was starting in everyone’s lives and to dwell too much on the past removes your ability to develop. scars will always act as a reminder about what happened but, you must think of them as a motivation to develop and grow so you don’t hurt yourself in the same way. We were all celebrating moving on from the normal routine of classes we don’t really care about and talking to people we sort of care for into a fearful unknown of new people and opportunities. 

The final closure was at the end of the day, the literal final few minutes of our school time. The Year Thirteen marched through the gates in a symbolic act of moving on and the few of us that didn’t take off as soon as possible for food stayed behind for one final photo and goodbyes. The final celebration from years of work concluded with us all wandering in our own separate directions into our own stories. Happy about the ambiguity to come.