"The reason I am thinking so far in advance is because school is terribly lonely. I think I've said that before, but it's getting harder every day"

A mind cast far into the future is often a mind trying to survive the present. The speaker uses long-range planning as an emotional brace, a way to erect scaffolding around a life that feels unstable. School, named bluntly as “terribly lonely,” isn’t just a setting; it’s a system of corridors, conversations, and closed circles that constantly remind a person of their separateness. When belonging is scarce, imagination becomes a refuge. Thinking ahead becomes a way to borrow strength from a day that hasn’t yet arrived.

The self-correction, “I think I’ve said that before”, reveals two things at once: the cyclical nature of loneliness and the speaker’s growing self-consciousness about it. Repetition is both confession and coping. Saying it again almost validates the feeling; it proves the pain didn’t disappear overnight. But it also hints at the fear of becoming a burden, of being the person who keeps bringing the same ache into every room. The loneliness hasn’t just persisted; it has compounded. “It’s getting harder every day” evokes the quiet arithmetic of isolation, the way each unshared lunch, each unreturned glance, accrues like interest.

There’s a paradox here: planning for a distant future can create hope, yet it can also underscore how intolerable the present feels. The act of forecasting, college, new friends, a life elsewhere, implies a longing to step out of time, to skip past the halls and the cafeteria and the bus rides where invisibility stings. At the same time, that forward gaze can deepen the sense of stuckness; the future shines precisely because today is dim.

Chbosky captures adolescence as a liminal season where the need to be seen collides with structures that sort, rank, and overlook. The voice is intimate and unspectacular, which makes the pain feel common and therefore credible. It reads as a small prayer for endurance: if the future can be imagined in enough detail, perhaps the present can be endured long enough to reach it.