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By Logan Bibby
I never really liked the High School Musical movies. Musicals were always so unrealistic to me; I don’t really understand why they just start singing out of nowhere. I’d much rather have a standard plot, moved by dialogue, and body language — no singing or dancing. But, regardless, like every other child, I watched the trilogy, all of them against my will. I watched Troy, Gabriela, Sharpay, Chad, and Ryan go through their junior year, summer break, and finally, their senior year. I watched them go to prom, enjoy vacations, graduate, sing, dance, and do whatever their hearts desired during the upper years of their high school career. We all did. We all thought, one day, we’d go to prom, enjoy vacations, graduate, sing, dance, and do whatever our hearts desired. Just like them. You all know what happens next.
Early on senior year, one of my teachers said that I would go through the grieving process for the lost latter half of high school. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And I thought, at least by now, I would be done with it. I can look out of my window and see my high school and not feel much of anything anymore. I can mention teachers I miss without feeling that familiar nostalgic pang in my chest. But, when I see my friends who are still in high school post pictures about their day and random conversations they had with teachers, I still get upset. I miss those little mundane things that made my high school experience what it was: those acquaintances that I would only talk to in class and wave to in the hall, the sweet cafeteria workers that would hand me lukewarm bosco sticks with my favorite strawberry milk, and getting to school at 6:15 A.M. to get a good parking spot on 1st Street. However, what I miss most are my friends. I still think about our silly, stupid conversations that we would have in a booth at Raising Cane’s or our own personal car ride musicals filled with Luther Vandross and Patti Labelle. I miss the simple things, how simple life was back then. For many people, these are happy memories that they had the proper amount of time to move on from, but for me, these are lost times that I only can mourn, stuck in the constant what-ifs and why-nots.
Maybe this is too dramatic. I’ve been told I’m an overly emotional and nostalgic person who hates change. Maybe that’s just what this is, an overly emotional and nostalgic war against change, against my progression into adulthood. I’ll be 20 on November 3rd. I don’t remember what it was like to not add -teen to the end of my age after being questioned about how old I was. I still feel like I’m 17. I still want my own High School Musical, my prom, my graduation. I guess I am overthinking everything. Everyone seems to have moved on just fine, and I’m still holding onto tattered scraps of the past. I don’t know if I finished those five stages of grief. I want to come to accept that I need to embrace the future and move on from the past. I just don’t think I’m ready yet.
Logan Bibby is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2025. She is studying sociology, political science, and Spanish at the University of Louisville.