Grief
Annika Fisher-Eddy (she/they)
Editorial Team Member
I never quite knew what grief felt like before. My grandma died when I was five, but I wasn’t old enough yet to understand. I’ve gone through breakups, but I’m a pretty resilient person, so I got over those pretty quickly.
But I finally know what real grief feels like now. I’m a junior in high school this year, and this is the first year in high school I haven’t been in the marching band. In fact, it’s the first year I haven’t done band since elementary school. The school band has been something I’ve been a part of since sixth grade. But this year, I decided to quit band for several different reasons. Mainly, the environment of band wasn’t great. I was in percussion and the other percussionists weren’t always so nice to me.
I enjoyed band. In fact, I loved it. And without the help of my parents, I wouldn’t have quit because I loved it so much. It was so much fun getting to perform at football games during marching season and winning awards at competitions. I felt like I had a purpose. And my purpose was being in band. It’s just been a part of my identity. I’m a band kid. Well, I was.
But I had to quit. As I said, it wasn’t the greatest social environment. This had been happening since my freshman year, but I’m not an emotionally sensitive person, so it didn’t bother me much for a while, and I thought they were just teasing me. But eventually, it did start bothering me because it was persistent, and I started to get the feeling that they were bullying me, and it actually started to affect me and make me feel bad about myself. I still didn’t want to quit because I loved band so much for the most part, but my parents knew what was right for me better than I did, and they made me quit. And now I’m glad they did, even though I didn’t want to quit at the time.
Before, quitting band felt like I had lost a part of me, and I had no purpose anymore. For the first, about, six weeks of school, I felt that way. By week five, I joined the stage crew for my school’s annual musical — this year it was Hadestown — and I had thought surely by then I’d be over my feelings about quitting band since I found something new that I enjoyed.
But it took longer than that. Now I’m about eight weeks into school, and I’ve finally mostly gotten over my emotions. Closing night for Hadestown was last Sunday, and now that Hadestown is over, I’ve realized how much I’ve forgotten about band. Working on Hadestown took my mind off band, and to be completely honest, I might’ve even enjoyed it more than I enjoyed band. I enjoyed band a lot, but being part of the musical was so much fun. I’m honestly glad I quit band now because if I hadn’t, I would’ve been sitting in the audience watching Hadestown and wishing I was a part of it. Though I’m still a little sad about quitting band, I’m not nearly as sad about it as I was four weeks ago.
Now, I’m sad that Hadestown is over. I am planning on working on other shows this year, but Hadestown was an experience I’d never had in my life, so it will always have a special place in my heart. I was also on stage crew for my school’s production of Les Miserables last year, but honestly, Hadestown was more fun. The show was more complicated than Les Miserables, in both the tech aspect and the acting aspect, and I learned new things about theater that I didn’t know before. So I can’t even explain how glad I am to have worked on the show. And if I hadn’t quit band I wouldn’t have been able to work on it, because doing a musical and marching band at the same time would’ve been too hard.
Junior year has been really hard academically, and it has affected my mental health. Sometimes I feel like I’m not good enough, because it seems like everyone else is better at certain classes than I am, and that something must be wrong with me because I can’t do it. It’s really affected my self-esteem. But I stood up for myself, and I talked to my counselors about it and I have now switched from Precalculus, which was really hard for me, to Advanced Math Reasoning. Though I’ve only been in it for one class period so far, it already seems like this class will be a lot easier for me and less stressful. I’m so glad I stood up for myself, because not only am I less stressed, it also gave me practice for having to stand up for myself in the working world.
I’m also in a friend group now that might be the best friend group I’ve ever been in. These new friends relate to me more than any of my other friends ever have. We’ve all suffered through hard times in our life, and we all understand each other so well because we’ve been through similar things as each other. We support and help each other through our struggles, and it’s amazing to have people in my life like that. If I wasn’t in this friend group, I don’t think I would be in as good of a mental state as I am right now.
Four weeks ago, I felt like junior year was the worst school year of my life, and I just wanted it to end. But now that I’ve been a junior for almost a quarter of a school year, I’ve shifted my thinking. While it is still the most stressful school year of all time, I’m realizing now that grieving something has given me new experiences that I’ve never had before, and it’s given me amazing opportunities to learn things that will really help me for the rest of my life. Grief is something that should be valued and looked at in a more positive light because it can help people become better. While everything in my life has changed in the last several months, I’m super happy with my life right now, and I have a feeling it will keep getting better as the school year goes on.