Personal Narrative: The Fall Of High School

Skimming through the school supplies, another school year about to start. I rummaged through the notebooks as the aside fills up with equally as anxious students with their parents. As I politely waited for a family to make their way to the end of the aisle, allowing me to take a closer look at the binders, I spotted an old friend. Vanessa, was a friend I knew I could always rely on these past few years, but all that felt like an ancient memory. We hadn’t spoken in almost a year. She acknowledged me with a slight nod, we made small talk about what we had been up to and what we had planned for the fall. From excitedly talking about our plans, cracking jokes and laughing uncontrollably every afternoon to not even texting each other in over a …show more content…
We were all quite close, always sharing our plans about our personal futures, what we wanted to study and accomplish. As the years rolled on we all began finalizing our dreams and goals. This is where I think we all began to drift apart, we all had different careers and more importantly different schools to look forward to in the fall. Vanessa has been another old friend I had shared a handful of great memories. She and I in particular couldn’t be any more diverse. Vanessa was always very family oriented, driven about her personal life. While I was much more detached worried about the bigger picture, politics, the economy and social justice issues. This difference drove a wedge between us, she never understood why I was so interested in “conflict” while I was always annoyed by her naïve ignorance of the world around her. Despite all of this, I remained cordial for the sake of the group, to not create drama and a bigger rift between the other girls. I did have a good relationship with. As graduation loomed closer and closer and the conversations often revolved around keeping in touch and parties. I had to make up my mind, was this friendship in particular worth …show more content…
I focused on the fact that now I had the opportunity to express myself more thus uncovering more about my personality and who I am. But in the same way I wanted to be express myself and be understood I learned that I needed to hear and understand those around me. I came to the realization that my actions had been wrong. I wanted to go back and change them. I was convinced if I had tried something different, maybe the result wouldn’t have been the same. But by this time, I had reflected about my life before and after the incident and this taught me that being true to that was much more important than any friendship, especially a friendship that is very unsupportive. These months allowed me to solidify my opinions, views and most significantly decide the kind of person I really am. These new discoveries also enabled me to understand the kind of people that I wanted to surround myself with. People that support one another, and make the effort to understand each other as well. But with these realizations I understand that I was wrong. In the same way I wanted Vanessa to understand my point of view, I myself should have made the effort to understand her. The writer Ralph Waldo Emerson summaries this with his quote, “The one way to have a friend is to be one”. This was the most important reflection, I made from this