A Peek Into My Future | Springing Back #1
Springing Back is a series of writings based on/inspired by events, happenings, and feelings of Spring 2024 holiday. Subtly transformative, I would like to believe.
What better way to start a break than to terrify yourself? It’s almost like seeing a warning sign before a theme park ride. First, it looks fun, and then the sign makes it sound a bit terrifying: “This is a high speed right with sudden bumps and stops. Avoid if..” Or like reading teen slice of life movie reviews before watching them, thinking, “Maybe it’s not as good as it looks in the trailer.” There. Let’s set the situation like a movie.
Scene. End of semester. Cool wind but the magnetic pull to go to the beach for fun is especially stronger. Thesis presentation of the upperclassmen at university. March graduation ceremony. People going away from the town you are stopping to live by.
To set up the scene even more: as a sophomore, the character is slowly having less and less classes to attend to, and finally met with another long holiday.
MAIN CHARACTER
(sighing, now out of relief)
All that’s left to do is see my senior friends do their thing one by one. And then them leaving.
[Regressive plot, a flashback into main character’s past where someone left town to move on with life. Let’s call this Plot 2, and the spring break Plot 1.]
Plot 2.
MAIN CHARACTER
(Putting her things back on the floor, another sigh of relief after a long day)
Damn, they're leaving?
(out of nowhere, tears start to flow down her cheeks, so smoothly it was reaching her lips in seconds)
(sobs)
And who will I look up to? Where do I go to search for inspiration from now on?
(sobbing got harder)
I guess I’ll at least have their words I can hold on to.
(opens her notes, jotted down what they said for fun the last time they met)
Note about main character: doesn’t have much strong connection with people around her, let alone this person who just left. Just a fear of loss of someone as an inspiration. Fear that there would be one less reliable person for her to see as a role model. One less person in her city to be a reminder of good things.
Plot 1.
MAIN CHARACTER
(as she sits and watches people present their thesis, she mumbles while putting her words down to a text)
Ah, the shining students. The inspirational bunch, and how do I top these people?
TEXTED FRIEND
(text from message)
There’s no need to make this a competition girl. You can be your own enemy, right? As long as you’re better than yourself before.. or something like that.
(silence, both characters sinking in the words)
Someone said that, right?
MAIN CHARACTER
(on a text reply)
I can set my own standards, right? But I choose these people, the “better ones”, as my standards.
TEXTED FRIEND
(on another reply)
You poor competitive girl.
MAIN CHARACTER
(mumbles to herself, thinking she made a somewhat funny remark, and feeling a bit boiled up out of slight anger)
I, poor competitive girl.
(she let go of her phone on her pair of hands, trying to focus back on some unknown senior’s presentation)
(she blinks hard, as if putting an effort to gain focus)
(but what comes out of the blink wasn’t extra eye-lid-opening power, it was the dampening of the eyes.)
I think I need to go to the toilet.
(marches out of the room into the nearest toilet, head down to keep the forming tears from drooping down her cheeks like the time in Plot 2)
Note: It was a slight anger at the challenge to reach her own standards, then turned into a cloud of pressure with widening fog in her head. With the pressure, the anger fades but a mixed feeling of worry, among other things, remain.
Extra note (a.k.a. I’m tired of the script form): A peek into the near future has its own pros and cons. One of the cons being knowing what to expect, therefore also the pressure that may come out of it. And one pro being knowing what to expect, too, so you can prepare for it when it happens. Which one to take, that is up to each main character in their own stories. Their own movie. Their own slice of life.
