Post Secondary School Blues
A photo essay on leaving secondary school and finding your place in the world.
Toni Williams*
*Name has been changed to a pseudonym for anonymity
It's the 30th of June, 2023. School has ended, and along with it, the empty platitudes of it being "the best years of my life". I don't feel the great mass of emotions I expect to. I wait for the tears, the immense joy or relief to overwhelm me—yet there's nothing.
It's just another day.
I always knew the end of high school was definitive. It's everything else that confuses me.
The same question has run daily through my mind since. Whispers of "Who am I?" haunt me as I leave it all behind.
Central London is "Home" in name only.
In practicality only.
I've seen the cafes, restaurants and parks a million times. I've enjoyed and lounged about in them.
But I don't get that "home feeling" when I return. There is no bone-deep sense of belonging in its streets for me.
It feels like another temporary situation that I'm destined to live out—even if it's one that's existed for years.
I wonder where my actual home will be.
As I think back, the memories of outings with friends bring me comfort, as do the solitary trips to the National Theatre and Chinatown. Here, in these memories, there's safety.
There might be little safety for those in power, though. The "Kill Tory Scum" graffiti speaks to the chaos we graduate into.
[It's merely a reflection of public opinion. No need to take it seriously. It's just the people talking].
I remember my time at Brighton Beach and Haywards Heath.
Times that seemed unimportant while there have gained more significance since I’ve lived beyond them. It was there that I attended my first Pride and felt that sense of belonging.
In my romanticisation of the place, I remember thinking:
Maybe this place is it. Maybe Brighton could be “Home.”
Look at that sea. There’s no border here, not really.
I attended my second Pride back in London. I celebrated alongside the communities biggest “allies”—the big corporations that refuse to hire and support queer folk beyond the month that draws all of the world’s cameras. The commercialisation of Pride, let alone the privileging of white voices, frustrates me, so once again, I feel alienated due to the fact that I don’t belong here.
In my childhood home, there is an ever-growing stack of books devoted to some vague revolution I have no absolute certainty I’ll ever really partake in.
Right now, I’m unsure of what to do. Every few weeks, there is a change of sanctuary. Once, it was the BFI, then Housmans Bookshop. Now it’s in and around Camden Market. My heart remains unsettled, untethered.
It’s not easy being Black, young and queer, even in this modern "open-minded" world.
I remain confused, lost and still alive, no longer at school.
