Column: The End

This year has been a lot of things. It’s been a year full of laughter. I’ve laughed so hard it felt like my lungs would never draw air again. I’ve also cried a little. It’s been a year of waiting. I’ve counted off each last and started to think about a lot of firsts that are racing closer and closer. I’ve cursed the way time crawls when you want it to race and flies when all you could wish is for it to stand still a moment. It’s been a really good year. The Best Year? Possibly. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

The whole year has been a giant ending of sorts, and anyone who’s ever read a novel knows endings are never completely free of bumps. Even the most smooth-sailing beach read requires a couple choppy waves that send your head into panic before anything can reach that tidy, perfect conclusion we all ache for.

I’ve always assumed that requirement was there to make the story interesting, but now I think it’s there just a little bit to make it believable. What is literature if not a reflection of our own lives? There is no way to circumnavigate the hard stuff, even if it’s as little as stressing out over the vacation book you were reading for the purpose of avoiding stress. Everyone experiences high points and low points — it’s part of being human — but you can feel a fundamental difference when you know it’s the end. When there’s just a few pages left of the book, the stakes feel higher than ever at those low points, and the highs leave us utterly elated.

If senior year is one long, drawn-out ending, then there have been lots of high points, a glowing one being this, right here. Getting to sit down and swim through my own thoughts and experiences and put them down on paper in a way I never have before. Writing about my life almost like I would in a diary, but knowing there are people on the other end who will read it who aren’t me in five to 10 years. The feeling of purpose when a voice I’ve always had no longer feels like it’s going into a void or being muffled inside a stack of notebooks scattered throughout the house that are never going anywhere. This type of writing was something I wanted for so long, and I loved every second of it.

Right now, it’s a time of goodbyes. Goodbye to being a senior and having a place to be every Monday through Friday from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon. Goodbye to driving my small car through relatively traffic-free streets and working at the bright blue snow cone hut. Goodbye to seeing my friends every day and going to the dance studio after school and staying there until well after the sun has gone down. Goodbye to living with the same three people I’ve lived with my entire life. Goodbye to this. To sitting alone in my room with music playing so loud it blocks out anything else happening in the house around me while I just write and write and write. And goodbye to you; thank you for listening to what I have to say and watching me grow.