Its been a year now. A year in which so much has happened. So many of us have grown, into the young adults that you always knew we would be, but we somehow doubted, thinking life would pass us by. Leave us in an infinite childhood where we never had to deal with adult issues, decisions, and experiences.
Experiences like loss, which build us up in ways we cant even see, making us stronger and more equipped to cope. Yet in ways weaker and less equipped. Losing you made us all so much more vulnerable, like the stitches in our very person were falling apart and none of us quite knew how to deal with that. We lost so much in you. Know this, you were never simply just another teacher to me, and many others. If in my life I can impact someone the same ways you impacted me, ill be happy. In losing you I lost a mentor, a friend, an inspiration, and one of the few people who knew how to push me to succeed and who wouldn’t take no for an answer. And someone who had earned my respect in all these things. Strangely though, losing you strengthened us, brought us together in a way no one could have foreseen. As a class group we had never really gelled entirely, certain people and groups saw themselves as too exclusive for that, but somehow, someway, the majority of us bonded. Friendships were formed that may not be for life, but they got us through 2009 which was probably more important.
Stage Challenge was for you. All for you. The months and months of work, all worth it in that 8 minutes where hopefully we did good. On the night there was laughter, and tears, lots of tears. Tears cause we didn’t do as well as we thought we might, tears because it had been a long journey, but mostly tears for you. Cause you couldn’t be there to join in the day, couldn’t tell us you were proud, couldn’t join Mr D in the coming week and tell us that we had done good, and if it took wearing bright pink slut outfits to win, then we’d take losing any day.
Sometimes it felt like the times we needed you the most, you weren’t there, but looking back, those were the times we had to think for ourselves, make our own decisions. The times that led towards us moving on, moving out into the big wide world. It meant we had to think for ourselves because you weren’t there to help solve our problems, or come up with a clever solution that we couldn’t have thought of on our own. One of the things I miss the most, is the way that you used to find sneaky methods to cheat the system, but pass it off as clever, because, “we could do so many better things with our brains (or time!) than doing things the long way!”
School just wasn’t the same. For any of us last year. Monumental moments had sadness tinting their edges, in the knowledge that you weren’t there to experience life with us for 9 more months of our lives before life itself as we knew it ended. Classes, that you were meant to teach, in which you were replaced by people who could never match up to even part of you if they wanted to. Teachers who had no comprehension of understanding us as people. I think that’s why we respected you so much. You actually had a genuine interest in us, you cared what happened to us outside Calculus and Maths. And we appreciated that so much, but never told you, because you weren’t into soppy stuff like that. I wish we’d had the nerve to force you to listen to us. I wish we’d spent a day every year where we just told you how amazing you were.I wish it had been easier without you. I almost wish I didn’t care about you so much. That way, going on might have been easier…
We tried. So damn hard, Miss. And sometimes trying just got too painful. And so we ended up distracting ourselves. No one ended up where we thought we would or where even you thought we would. Which is kind of scary. Because the things you had in mind for us, we will never know. So the futures you wanted for us, are just possibilities to grow dusty in the attic of our minds.
There are so many things I wish I could say to you right now.
But words dont do it. They can’t encompass the enormity of it. Of my love for you.
I miss you, Miss Kirby. And I love you. Thank you for everything you did for me at school, and all the time you invested in pushing me to the best i could be. I will never forget you. See you later, someday we’ll meet again. I have faith in that.. xx ♥
"The pain will ease, and I can learn” – Rent the Musical
“Only the good die young, they’re only flying too close to the sun, and we’ll remember, forever… Another tricky situation, I get to drowning in the blues, and I find myself thinking, well, what would you do?” – Queen, No One But You (Only the Good Die Young)
♥ WWKD???? – What Would Kirby Do???? ♥
