the final bucky graduation speech :)
note: i go to a therapeutic school
1,371 days ago, we stepped into the hallways of our high schools for the first time, eyes wide with wonder and fear. The same us, just 1,371 days younger. We had just begun reintegrating into in-person schooling after COVID had propagated across the world. Yet it seemed that the pandemic had frozen us in time, as if we were trapped in a bubble beyond time itself. We had become familiar with our bumbling lives of binge-watching Netflix shows and the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, attending (and skipping) online classes on Zoom, and the monochromatic life of eat, sleep, cry, repeat. We carried the weight of our sorrows on our shoulders, grief and depression and whatever your poison is dragging us down like a chain on our ankles as we struggled to move forward. It seemed that the world had moved on. While everyone was walking forward on airport walkways, we were going the wrong way, struggling to even stand still.
“It gets better,” they told us. “You’ll find your purpose in life.” But for us, we had struggled so long with no light at the end of the tunnel. It was the kind of haunted suffering that burrows inside your ribcage and worms its way into your brain like a parasite, whispering lies that you’ll never get better and you're hopeless and worthless. And we believed them. We are not high schoolers navigating the waters of life. We are hospitalizations and therapy that doesn’t seem to work and mental breakdowns in the bathroom in the middle of the night. I gave up. There was no future for me, I told myself.
Yet 1,371 days later, I stand here, my heart still beating steadily in my chest and my lungs inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. Still breathing. I don’t know what I’m doing half of the time, but I know that I must keep going. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving.”
And what did we learn in those 1,371 days? What was it all for?
I learned that a number or a grade does not dictate your worth; you don’t need to be the smartest or the prettiest or the richest to be happy; that asking for help doesn’t make you weak. I learned that this journey has lost me friends and gained me others; that those who are there for you at your lowest are ones you should keep; and if you are having a panic attack, those stupid breathing exercises actually work and ice dives can be lifesaving. I learned that running away from your problems doesn’t solve them, it just makes you regret; that the first step is accepting that there is a problem in the first place. And most importantly, I learned that while we broke down and suffered, we sure are a whole lot stronger.
When other kids’ parents were worrying about their grades or their boyfriends, my parents just wanted me to stay alive. Every time they walked into my room they worried about whether they would find me passed out on the ground, whether they would wake up one day and my heart would be still. Mom, Dad, I graduated. I’m sorry I made you worry. I’m here, living. And I will be for a long, long, time. I’m going to make you proud.
One year ago if you asked me where I would be today, I would have answered “dead.” Never did I think I would make it to this day. That I would get my life back, and my parents would get their daughter back.
I spent my whole teenage years running away from something that followed me everywhere I went like my own shadow. It’s important to remember that “the past doesn’t go away. So you can either live with it forever, or do something about it.” So do something about it. Get the help that you’ve been afraid to ask for. Sometimes the real way to win is to stop fighting. Accept your reality. It only goes up from there. You are not alone in this lost world, this multiverse of humans carrying a multitude of sorrows. I never believed them when they said I would get better, but I know now that it was true. The world didn’t end when I thought it did. The earth kept spinning on its axis, and the moon kept shining her face onto our horizon. Keep going. Even if the most you can do is get out of bed or make it to the end of the day, keep going.
Thank you for the good memories.