Have you no idea that you're in deep?
I dreamt about you nearly every night this week
How many secrets can you keep?
-Arctic Monkeys
Hazel thumbed through the yearbook with nostalgia humming in her chest. She was a senior, ready to graduate high school and leave everything that plagued her behind. The yearbook was released right at the end of the year, before graduation and after prom. Hazel knew that the yearbook being released during the end of the year was a political ploy. Fights, tears, bloodshed, kisses, rekindling, smiles, all the drama she could think of from the past four years raced through her mind with a manic intensity. Students would be too overwhelmed by sentimentality to be angry or stressed or judgemental or catty.
Hazel would never forget her feelings. Like an elephant, she wouldn't forget. They were important to her now, in this moment. Six days, or six weeks, or six months, or even six years from now, Hazel realized in a moment of somber clarity she would probably see this moment as something more general. It would be a foggy, hazy blur of a memory as more life experience filtered into her life. That was the inevitable reality of growing up that adults threw at Hazel. When life got tougher and more gritty, the pettiness of high school would fade as the adult world engulfed her.
The message she received from the not so subtle fear inducing talks from authority figures were meant to excite Hazel. However, she didn't want to be reminded of the horrors of the outside world. It was a frightening place if you let it knock you down. Refusing to stand again after being knocked over wasn't something Hazel aspired to; she didn't want to lose control of her life as she knew it solely because adulthood was hard. Her entire senior year was spent learning to appreciate her independence, and her ability to make her own decisions that she would be proud of in the end. She capable of so much as long as she persevered with passion and sheer force of will. As she would move forward with a warm, open heart and ambitions, she would succeed. At least, she hoped that was what her life would amount to; she wasn't able to see the future, but at the very least, she was glad to have a shred of optimism left. Adulthood wouldn't steal her curiosity, her enthusiasm, her desire, her ambitions, her dreams.
Hazel has gotten used to compartmentalizing her own feelings to accommodate room for keeping everyone's secrets. Her friends, her acquaintances, even her teachers and family members, kept something locked away from the world, never to let go until those wounds threatened to spill out and overwhelm everyone around the secret-keeper. Haze learned the true worth of trustworthiness and active listening. People expected an emotional crutch. Hazel, desperately fighting an internal desire for That was something she would no longer do. This revelation made her heart ache. She was told honesty was the best policy, but she never knew at what cost. It was a cost she would need to calculate in order to understand the ramifications of her actions.
Did Hazel even want to know about how other people's minds worked in the same depth as vulnerable, approval-starved, emotionally needy high school students? She admitted that she was one of those vulnerable, approval-starved, emotionally needy high schoolers. It's a rite of passage to journey through life aimlessly, alone and afraid. Hazel hated it in the moment, but looking back, the pain was worth it. The woman she was now arose from the decisions she made and the people she hung around with. That was a fact.
As much as she wanted boundaries, the secrets past would hang in her mind. Secrets were precious, and they couldn't be forgotten. Hazel didn't need them to sit heavy on her shoulders. The burden she bore was her own. That was all Hazel wanted.