Last days

It’s only just hit me that summer is coming to an end. I have about nine days left of freedom, before I have to pull myself together and face the big fat monster known as sixth form. I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything at all this summer. Apart from my trek (well, more like long flight) back to the distant country my parents call “home”, I haven’t gone anywhere. I haven’t even started on the Great Big Novel I was discussing in my last post. The characters are there, begging to be let out of my head and placed onto a page, but when I’m at my laptop I forget all about their existences. Having said that, I don’t even know what I do all day at my computer. I’ve lost interest in video games. I don’t have the attention span to marathon TV shows (sorry, everyone who’s begging me to watch Game of Thrones) or anime any more. My web history reveals nothing but endless Reddit posts, but I can’t for the life of me remember what they were about.

I don’t even remember doing my GCSEs, so getting my results last week was pretty surreal as well. When I try and cast my mind’s eye back to what was going on in early June, my mind draws a blank. All I can recall is writing my name and candidate number over and over again on the front of fresh exam papers. For two whole months, I wasn’t Mee-Mee. I was 8362, doing Latin paper number 3 on an irritatingly wobbly desk. It was nice to know I did well in said exams, though, and even nicer to have dodged the press and cameras when going to get my results. Then I spent the rest of the day laying under a tree with a friend, staring up at the sky and thinking about nothing at all.

I don’t know how to feel about the fact I’m going to be a Real Life Sixth Form Student (TM) in just over a week. I’ve always looked at the sixth formers at school as a completely different breed of people, as these mature people with their lives as together as their outfits and their colour coded subject binders. Even when the year above entered Year 12, it didn’t register that this time next year I would be in their place, being some kind of mature and responsible role model for the years below. A few nights ago I was fighting with a fly in my room and losing. How am I meant to metamorphosise into someone preparing for uni admissions in such a short span of time?! It doesn’t make sense. I have a feeling I have my work cut out for me, but at the same time I relish the challenge. What’s the worst school can throw at me? I’ve been dealing with overbearing Asian parents for my whole life. Having a few teachers on my back ain’t gonna feel like shit.

Honestly, being sixteen in the summer is just so overhyped. The media and the popular rich kids you happen to have added on Snapchat present this image of teenagerhood as this wild, crazy, booze-fuelled party that everyone has to be at, otherwise you’re doing something wrong. And on the other hand, every week my parents manage to find a story about some teenage refugee who’s on the brink of curing cancer or something amazing, and they wonder why I’m not like that. I guess that’s why I feel like I’m not achieving anything. I guess that’s why I don’t feel sixteen. Hell, I’m closer to being seventeen now. I know people literally days away from turning seventeen, close friends who will soon be allowed to drive cars and…do other big adult things I don’t know of yet. But for now, I’m okay with not having to worry about that. My last days of summer, and subsequently my last days of being an irresponsible kid, don’t have to be full of parties and making out with people I don’t know the name of. Laying in fields is good enough for me.