Dear reader,
I have to be honest — this doesn’t really feel like the end. For months now, I’ve been building up the idea of the end of senior year in my head. An emotional culmination of four years of hard work and four years of memories, yet when I think about it now, I am in complete and utter denial.
Graduating in just a week? Nope, not happening. Leaving behind all my favorite sophomores and juniors? Nah, that’s not a thing. All my close friends being far away from each other in just a couple of months, and maybe never talking to each other ever again, because we all became completely different people once we went to college, and are just vague high school memories that are then referenced in some TikTok trend thirty years later? I don’t think so.
I believe that everything and nothing can change. It’s like Schrodinger’s cat if you really think about it. Change is inevitable, but if I never acknowledge it, has anything really changed at all? Is the cat really still alive? (Am I still alive?)
Even though the whole point of the experiment was to mock the idea of quantum superposition, I find great comfort in knowing that I can both have my cake and eat it too. That’s a more fitting metaphor if I’m being honest. It all comes back to the inherent selfishness of a teenage girl wanting everything in the whole wide world.
I want to leave high school, grow up and live it up at college. But, I also don’t want to leave my friends, move away to a different city, and basically rediscover who I am. Everything in me wants to run as fast as possible away from DV as soon as I get my diploma, but a part of me doesn’t want to go too far.
Some might even call it a catch-22. No matter what I want, I’m still losing something in the process. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, except I’d rather let the rock crush me than choose one over the other.
I’ve realized that while I want to leave, I don’t want to leave everything behind. It’s always, “you’re gonna go far,” but no one tells how heartbreaking it is to look back afterwards. So I guess that’s where the problem lies. Everyone wants to leave until they realize that leaving means never being able to go back.
Since I was little, I’ve always struggled horribly with the idea that almost everything in my life will change at some point. Now, even activities that have been such a constant in the last years of my life will soon become memories that I look back upon. It’s always been a “we have next year,” but suddenly it’s time to do it all one last time before saying goodbye forever.
Okay, I’ll admit that’s a little dramatic. It’s not as if I’m going to be banned from coming back here. But it’s not going to be the same anymore. Nothing will ever be the same, and maybe that’s okay.
And yes, this is all just ramblings from an overtly emotional 18 year-old girl who is sad about graduating, but honestly, nothing has helped the overwhelming fear and crushing weight of knowing everything that’s made up my life will no longer be a part of my life than writing this column.
Knowing that somewhere, my thoughts, my fears and my love for what I did these last four years and my love for everyone I grew close to, is preserved in my writing. Because the truth is, months from now, I’m probably not going to be as sad as I am at this current moment. Maybe I’ll finally be happy that I left it all behind.
It’s easy to accept the inevitable when I think back to when One Direction first split up. Odd, I know. They released a song called “Walking in the Wind” — all about how goodbyes aren’t the end. I’ve hated the song since I heard it. Not that it’s a bad song, but I never really bought into the idea of ‘until next time.’ Aren’t goodbyes meant to signify the end? However, recently, certain lyrics from the song have felt more real than ever. Because it’s not the end, and I’ll see all my favorite faces again.
But for now, I’m gonna mourn the fact that I am leaving and who I am leaving behind. So goodbye to my favorite co-editor, who has read all these columns and seen them through to the end, hope you have a great time reading through this one.
I’ll see you all again — walking in the wind.
Until next time,
Kayal
