It's been a while.

 This is more for my benefit than anyone else's.

I wrote my last exam over a month ago.

It's flooding my head.

I am a few days from my results. The tension will kill me before the marks do.

I'm almost certain that just like anyone I've met, or any version of me that I have been, you feel that no one gets your struggle. It's true, in a way. None of us will ever resonate with anyone else's pain. 

Elaine Scarry (The Body In Pain) says rightly, "To have great pain is to have certainty, to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt." We coped differently this year, and we coped in ways that killed us before we knew it. Anything goes when you're trying to forget being alone in a crowded world.

I also know we can't change what happened this past year. Amidst the terror, revulsion, and fury, I had little choice but to hunt peace down to the tiniest minutes, the moments that are insignificant in retrospection. Yes, it made them special. It also made them addictive and the unfortunate side effect of numbness to greater joy kicks in fast. 

Looking back, I did a lot to get through. A lot of short-term fixes with long-term effects I can't counter. The question echoes through my head over and over - was it worth it? If I could go back and do it again, if I could guide another naive ninth-grade student through tenth, would I do it again? 

There are two ways this can go, and it depends on my score. 

If I get above 95%, the question is whether I could have achieved the same results while keeping myself safe (and more importantly, sane). 

If I get below 95%, would it be that it wasn't enough? It would be that my limits weren't enough to get through the year, and then I'm screwed for the next. 

Clearly, there's no winning.

Houston, we have a problem.

See, and the thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. A lot of my batchmates have done the same, if not worse, to get here - a month after the last minute of giving a shit about the boards, still worrying. It never ends, even when you want to believe with your whole heart that it can.

Back in May of '22, I remember the severest breakdown I'd had in a while, that culminated in a strong belief that I was royally screwed for tenth grade. It took a while, a few botched exams, and a few good ones, to tell me that I might be fine. The key to it was that it could end. After 29th March 2023, the plan was to lie back and forget.

Clearly, it doesn't work like that. In fact, before the year started, I used to write. Now, I'm fairly positive right now that this is the first I've truly written, in a year. 

You will not believe the sheer numbers. 

The number of times you beg for it to end.

The number of times you give your best and you still fall short.

The number of times you think it's time to give up.

The number of false promises they make to keep you going.

The number of times you apply the proverbial balm to your proverbial knees after falling again.

The number of times your anger gets the best of you.

The number of fleeting moments that you crave for the slightest bit of peace.

The number of tears you shed. In front of people.

It breaks you. And I don't think it was worth it.

Never will I understand why people see it from the outside as simply another hurdle. Have you not been here before? Did you not feel the struggles as we did? Or did you give in earlier than we did? 

I recall starting the year with a yearning to fight, and maybe even win. Hell, I pushed that fight for a wickedly long time. But the agony of failure that lies to you is like the Devil lying to Eve - the harder you evade it, the longer it lingers in your head. It sucks the fight out of you. To paraphrase the adage, you can take the fight out of the girl, but not the girl out of the fight. 

Reading back, this seems romanticized. Fake, even. And perhaps, I have played with my words with glee. But when you're used to your words being taken with a grain of salt, your experiences reduced, and your feelings disregarded, you speak in metaphors to be considered. 

At the end of this untimely rant, the question still stands. Would I do it all again? 

In the blink of an eye.

Don't get me wrong, last year felt like I was trying to climb a mountain without an oxygen tank. And then, I reached the peak. A breathtaking scene is still breathtaking when you're deprived of oxygen. The rush of victorious quivers as I scribbled my last answers, the thumping of my heart as I handed my paper in, the delight of walking out of that exam hall, even the dawn of my growth curve of the past year, these are feelings I will never forget. I covet that excitement again. Conceivably, I desire to win again. 

"And like the moon, we must go through phases of emptiness to feel full again."

And now? Now, we wait.

Edit: Per angusta ad augusta.