So it's over.
You've graduated and the world is in the palm of your hands, and that is incredibly terrifying.
As time ticks down for wherever you are right now, you can't help but wonder what the future holds.
Things end and you can never really prepare, you can spend all of your time in the world wondering what the jump will be like, I remember, I felt so alone by the end of my senior year, I ate lunch in the principal's office, and spent most of my time wondering how my future would unfold. I had lost most of the people closest to me, and what I thought I wanted my life to look like got completely flipped upside down, and my senior year had not panned out anything like I had dreamed.
Still, I miss high school. miss is a strong word.
I’ll admit subjecting myself to 7:30 a.m. classes and repetitive speed walking to each one is not how I would ever like to spend my time again.
Many of the things I did in high school are of result watching “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” and learning the word hooky way younger than I was meant to, and if I publicly published how many absences I received, I’m afraid someone would ask me to mail back my diploma.
That being said I never truly found the right cadence when it came to school.
when I think of all the reasons I wish to never go back, I can’t help but feel nostalgic for the reasons I would.
There’s a feeling of community that comes along with adolescent persistence.
We all spend so long fitting ourselves into the perception of others, that when we finally find people who are willing to put their armor down as well, high school stops feeling like a battlefield
Kids I might never see again, singing in harmonies between lunch and 5th period. Freshman Study buddies who were basically certified geniuses in my book. The girl who told me my outfit looked nice on the day I needed it most. Shared injuries from fellow cheerleaders and a laugh to go with the pain. Teachers that made me feel like my words were actually important.
Goodbyes are hard. Sometimes we are unlucky enough to never do them properly or never realize at the moment that goodbye is really goodbye. God, truthfully I hate goodbyes and endings, I hate the feeling that I wish I could go back and change everything and make different choices. Love better, apologize faster, sing louder. This feeling has never arisen faster than now, at the precipice of a new school year for most, or simply just a new beginning.
I know looking back at it all I probably see it much sweeter than it was. But I’d be a major liar to say there’s nothing I would do differently, or just again. If I could I’d probably take more time listening to the people around me if I knew I’d never see them again. I would be less afraid of who saw me wear what and what people would think if I joined certain clubs.
I would not be so afraid to take big risks.
Instead, I can live in the knowledge that the fourteen-year-old girl who walked through the doors, left at seventeen with wishes, hopes, a stupid amount of tardy slips, and the chance to make a bigger impact outside of the walls I had spent so much time in.
This is all to say I still remember the last class I was in, and I still remember my computer lab password, and even though I would never go back, I hope I always remember.
There are so many wishes I had, people I wish I could have said goodbye to, moments I wish I lingered in more, I don't know why nostalgia is such an easy path to go down, or why it makes me cry like a baby, I think it has something to do with forgetting, or thinking the best of it might be over.
On graduation day, the future surrounded me faster than I could ever imagine, and I don't know exactly what I thought it would be, but I remember telling myself to enjoy it, to feel it because this isn't the best of it, but it’s just the beginning.
I wonder what it will look like, the beginning.
There are a mountain of things I wish I could give you to let you know everything is going to be okay, I don't even know where I would start, all I know is, it's over and you're scared and you won't admit it, or maybe you will, and you're much better than me, and you have no clue what is coming next. If I could tell you a secret, it would be this, this is the good part, it doesn't feel like it, but whatever you're leaving or wherever you're going, when you jump, don't worry about where you're landing or what cliff is behind you, for those two seconds for the rest of your life, feel yourself fly.
By Toni Desiree