inspiration

i woke up today...with the mind of a high schooler.
in other words, i woke up in the time it takes to get dressed and ready for that first bell to ring at high school.
however, i made it during first hour...i'm not in high school anymore, i don't have to follow those rules.
being in my high school was very strange. i don't really miss high school, i miss the building and the tradition that comes with high school.
i have been out of blue valley for about three years and i had to go back today for some documentation from the school psychologist...dr. chin.
i walked into the doors and i just stood there, soaking the hallway in, looking at a very important bench that was a crucial part of my senior year and then i started walking down the main hallway.
one of my former teachers walked towards me and i was hoping he had to take a second glance, but then i remembered he had the entire hallway length to figure out who i was.
he knew who i was right away, which was comforting in that i forget how much my teachers liked me and wanted to see me succeed.
i got to dr. chins office and of course he wasn't there...he never is, but i ran into yet another teacher who knew where my envelope full of stuff was...mrs. witcher.
i always love seeing her, she always knows the right things to say and she knows all about my academic struggles from high school and in college.
i got what i needed and could have left, but there were two more teachers i had to see, and i just really wanted to walk the hallways of blue valley high school.
because of all the school shootings that have happened over the years, the school has become a lot more strict, i used to never have to sign-in.
i had to sit in the office and wait for a teacher to come get me...it was odd, i never had to sit in the office, only once in high school and i never wanted to again after that.
it happened to be where i was sitting was where the three I.S.S students were, and i felt like was sent down to the principles office. i made sure when people asked that i was a college student.
why was i worrying what the teachers thought, they never had me as a student, who cares.
i walked to my teachers classroom...escorted by her and it was different. i am a junior in college and she is still a new mom and of course an abundance of things have changed, so it was a very good adult conversation. i wisped myself over to my old history teacher mr. peres classroom, who is a major reason i went to emporia state first and stuck with family studies, and he was the teacher that edited all of my high school papers.
these three teachers: mrs. witcher, mrs. rabbitt, and mr. peres are the ones who knew me best, they didn't just know me on an academic level but they where the teachers that invested the most time in me. every student at blue valley high school can say that about at least three teachers.
i was done visiting when the big shock was about to arrive. i walked down the horizontal main hallway towards the lunch room and the cafeteria...which is much nicer then when i was there, by the way.
but there it was, in all its glory...the band hallway.
i spent maybe around 80-90% of my time in that hallway, the band room, and the ever so glorious drum closet.
there were new lockers, no trophy case, there was carpet, and it was like all the tradition that my class, class of 2006, built up and tried to continue from year past was gone.
the worst was walking into the drum closet. it was clean, and there were no picture on the wall and our collection of energy drinks disappeared and at that moment, i realized, i know longer missed this place.
of course i miss my teachers and i will always remember the experiences i had...my high school career was a book in the making.
i looked in the drum closet and it was like i never existed, my locker was replaced, the wall of shame was gone. and i no longer felt a need to be there anymore.
i wasn't holding on to anything that made me want to go back to the high school. when i go back it means i have to pick something up from the office, and i do try and stop by witchers, rabbitts, and peres classrooms.
i was also able to watch the teenagers around me...a couple making out, boys running in the hallway, a girl saying,'why is she being so dramatic?'
at that point i felt very old, but i know so much more then those high schoolers, because i conquered that school, i graduated, there are things i know now about bvhs, that those students didn't and it felt really good.
i had one more place to go at my school and that was the tree garden.
i needed to visit kyle.
the tree garden is for any student that died while attending blue valley and kyle died april of 2006.
i just stood there, no emotion was running through me.
i wasn't sad, or angry, jealous, or happy, and i no longer felt sorry for myself for the way i treated kyle...we had a weird friendship...if you can call it that.
being at my high school brought everything back; the classes i took, the screw-ups i accomplished, and the great things i accomplished, how i looked in high school, how i treated the people around me, everything. i went by my old locker while walking through the senior hallway and i no longer missed the walls and tradition of blue valley high school.
since i was in the mode of visiting teachers, of course i had to visit the best teacher of all.
the teacher i had, had since 5th grade, the teacher that has influenced and inspired me the most...mr. strain, my percussion teacher.
he now works at the middle school, which is so weird considering they only time i didn't have him as a teacher during the day, everyday was in middle school.
he is like mrs. witcher, he always knows what to say, but with him it is different. he asks questions relating to me, not just academically, but because he knows what would happen if i was upset about something or if something life-altering happened, he knows how it affects me. i mean come on, he has known me since i was 10.
i walked through my past today and haven't regretted anything from it ever, and i still don't.
i am now at the point where i don't need to go back to those places that i was in 3,6and 9 years ago.
today was a good day, a day to finally say goodbye to my childhood.