Last Day of High School

We go through four years of high school, just kind of shuffling along, whining and complaining and wishing that it was all over. But it’s that moment at the very end that makes you contemplative, makes you wish we could hold on to the familiar forever. It’s this moment that makes you go, damn, those WERE the best four years of my life.

I can’t believe that we’re all graduating just next week. It’s tremendously surreal. This is the moment that defines that we, the class of 2012 of Evergreen Valley High School, as a whole, are now not kids, but truly adults. We are going to be off on our own, living our own lives at different places across the globe, and eventually be something later on in life. Maybe we’ll be able to be someone impressive, and maybe not. The matter of the fact is, when we reflect on the past for years to come, we’ll be able to tell our kids and our grandkids what we went through in high school.

We’ll be able to tell them what amazing friends we had, how much trouble we stirred, and what radical completely off-the-wall adventures we had ventured. Because, come on, lets face it, things are more fun when it’s not “legal”. We’ll be able to tell them about our teachers. The bad, the good, and the ugly. We’ll tell them which ones made a tremendous impact in our lives, which ones taught us something that was actually important. Because, lets face it, anyone can learn to regurgitate memorized materials. But we don’t have a class to learn how to deal with life, how to make the right choices, how to live well, or prosper. We’re told to accomplish these things without any actual directions on how to do it. So the true teachers that were there for us, went beyond the textbooks and taught us the things that actually really matters.

And of course, we’ll be able to tell them about our break ups, heartbreaks, heartaches, the drama, and the things that sucked so much as a teenager you never thought you’d be able to get through it. We’ll be able to say that, yes, things suck, but you will be able to get through it. After all, it is not what happens to us that sucks, it is how we interpret it to be that makes us believe that things suck.

We went through these last four years questioning our existence, wondering who we were, why we’re here, and what to listen to. We are pressured into doing things that our outside of our comfort zones, and we found true friends that would never pressure you into doing things that you don’t want. We found solace in each others’ existence, and that kind of camaraderie is something so precious, it’s almost a shame to sever these bonds after so long.

And I’m glad to have stuck it through all four years. I’m glad that I had spent these moments with friends that truly accept and love me for who I am, and what I do. Sometimes I took it for granted, but the fact that they’d allow me to take it for granted makes me even more grateful to them. I was truly lucky to never have had to second guess or question my own friend’s intentions. That is something that so few people have, and I don’t know what I’d done to have deserve such greatness in my life. And I was lucky and blessed enough to have a handful of such amazing teachers that know me on a first name basis and are more than happy to be a contact or reference of any such kind. I was lucky enough to have had a teacher give me his Beatles record collections because he knew that I loved them. It’s these little things that makes high school a home.

And it is always these bittersweet moments of life that gives you a true sense of how amazing life is, and a new realization of how short it is. One minute you’re here, thinking you’ll be making it someday. Then someday comes and you’re just kind of stuck in this whiplash effect of emotions. Where did the time go? I truly don’t know.