Growing with Goodbyes (The End of Semester 1)

Another phase of our life.

Gone, in the blink of an eye.

Saying goodbye is hard; maybe it's because of letting go. That was what I believed in, and perhaps, I still do. This is a different sort of goodbye, many would say, probably because it's hard on the heels of 24-hour-studying torture. It's the last paper, everyone, and now it's gone, cast away as yet another strand of those silvery things Rowling called memories.

Not to say I'm not euphoric; God knows I am. But now, as I sit down and write this, the room deathly silent save for the "A Thousand Years" music blasting from my computer speakers, things...change. It's the end of sems, and it's mid-November. A few more weeks, it'll be the end of the year and another goodbye. Seems like those SPM results-waiting times were things of the past, years and years ago, when it'd only been a few months.

I distinctly remember being reluctant to let go of the past - waking up everyday at six, putting on my uniform, heading for endless classes in the school filled with blue pinafores and white shirts. I remember being all melancholic about leaving home; I remember being nervous about living alone.

It's all so different now, seeing all those new faces in class, depending on yourself (and your roommate) to wake you up, feeling so fed up about choosing something to eat. People roam around the whole college with ease, with no worries about being chastised. Sleeping in class, eating in class, all those prohibited, forbidden actions now freely carried out. Having new lecturers of a really really wide variety, homework which don't really need to be handed in, fresh faces to be bullied and tease, being bullied and teased, new perspectives, new experiences, a deeper understanding of what it meant to be united despite your color or accents...

All those things that would have had a Form-five-me raising my eyebrows with wonder; now it's second nature.

These are the things that we'd look back at when we leave again, just as we'd looked back on our secondary life before we came here. Something --and the only thing-- that can be held on to, as proof that we'd existed, that this life existed.

It's been so long, yet so short. I've come so far--as is the case with everyone, I believe-- in such short time, merely six months. It's been a long journey, one filled with both wonders and excitement of the unknown. There had been so much I'd learnt, along with new and old friends alike, in this long-short journey of growing up.

Time really does fly, doesn't it? *sighs*



Now it's the end of first sem, then it's goodbye to INTEC, and--God willing--we'll be off to some other country. Next thing you know, we're adults, then old folks, and then... nothing but memories.

Maybe I'm just being stupid, holding on to things that can't be held on to. But it's those things that are worth holding on to, isn't it? Trying to hold on to time, to moments that have passed, to the smiles that pass in the fraction of a second, to the little wrinkles in time that slowly forms like the soft erosions against the smooth pebble.

But it's impossible, and that's what makes it even more precious. We cannot hold on to things past, nor something as intangible as time.

We can only bid goodbye, then walk away.

Saying goodbye this time isn't that hard. It's all smiles and laughter this time, unlike the first few "first times" that had us bidding farewell to the comfort of familiarity with tears in our eyes. Perhaps it's because there's no apparent loss in comfort nor familiarity. Perhaps it's because everyone is looking forward to regaining whatever semblance of the old familiarity at the place called home.

But there will be tears, eventually. Someday in the future we'll look back at this first semester and go, "Why does everything go by that fast?" And we'll wish we could come back to this stage of semi-adultness, with everything in a semi stage; the contaminated innocence, the confused feelings of love and hurt, the mixed joy of letting go and first times.

But I guess that's life, eh? GOodbyes and Hellos and what-nots. Everything's gotta end someday.

Thus, it's with a semi-heavy heart I bid this first--exciting, breathtaking, inspiring, and everything that's related to this wonderful phase of mixed rojak--semester :

Thanks for the memories,

and Goodbye.