Home… With or Without the L

Home is your favourite spot to sit at lunch. It’s the same chair you choose to sit in maths class. Home is your worn-in tartan dress and the accompanying panama; the echoing chatter of girls throughout G block; the Friday afternoon bell, or rather song. Home is attending a debating meeting and leaving with more unresolved arguments than when you came. Home is the cheer of friends as you battle the last lap of the 800m on athletics day. And now, once you’ve finally realised what home is, you have to leave and make a mess of it all – you have to rearrange things. Suddenly, you must find a new place to eat, and your spot in the maths room is no longer yours to claim. Your tartan dress is faded and way above knee length, and the straw of your panama is beginning to unravel just like the journey ahead of you. Leaving forces us to embrace the silence of steps throughout the corridors, and the fact you have find new people to argue with. Leaving forces us to change, to leave behind the familiar. It forces us to stop looking ahead to and finally look behind, no matter how paradoxical that may seem. Leaving forces you to rebuild.

To each of us, ‘home’ may look a little different. The décor on the walls, placement of furniture, layout of the house may all differ between us, yet the foundations remain the same. The people we have found along this schooling journey are what cements, floors, and puts the roof over our fairHOME. As many of us turn a new page in life, the décor could change, you may rearrange your room or paint the walls, but the people who have shared this journey with us – the foundations, that hold this house together will never falter through this.

In this reconstruction, the saying ‘home is where the heart is’ stands true. The threads of laughter, tears and memories have woven themselves together to form a patchwork of tartan on my heart – one identity, one persona, one giant, hilarious life shared with so many. The foundations of friendship, lifestyle and learning that have been the epicentre of my journey at Fairholme will always be exactly that. To me, this is home.

To all my fellow seniors, as we leave our home, remember to be gentle with yourself; we are still learning. You are here to make the best of it, to discover thing that move you deeply, to feel things, you have never felt before. You are here to meet people who ignite your mind, people who connect you with your very soul. You are here to turn the worst mistakes into the best opportunities and smile through whatever life throws at you. You are here to live a life you’re proud of and to find everything that exists in this world was made for you. Please just choose impossibility. Choose risk. Choose making mistakes and making memories and making it up as you go. Make it worth it. Make it count.

When the path seems to twist and turn, home will always be here for you, whether that’s with an ‘L’ or not.