The Middle

Blog post #2

I’ve been listening to Jimmy Eat World’s "The Middle" a lot. It’s a song from my middle school years, when my musical predilections were different (read: generally unbearable to look back on now). One day, though, the song came on while I had my iPod on shuffle, and now I’m actively playing it over and over again.

I think even in middle school, I recognized the sort of manufactured, clichéd quality of the lyrics, which include lines like—

“Just try your best./Try everything you can.”

Obviously, the song’s title also pops up: “It just takes some time, little girl./You’re in the middle of the ride.”

Never had I sought any deeper meaning in the song beyond its catchy tune, and it’s not that I’m now deciding it’s meaningful, exactly. I’m just also caught in the middle of what I’ve told everyone is a form of limbo—the year before I start living. Sometimes, in the middle of drudgery, I forget this (“this” being everything around me) is transient and that beyond having to do things as tedious as internal assessments or outlining chapters out of a textbook is years ahead of doing whatever I want. Maybe I’m actually supposed to be looking back with more forgiving eyes, now that the termination of my high school career is nearing. In reality, I am so not nostalgic.

Katherine Fang

Editor-in-chief
Bellaire High School--Three Penny Press