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shadowsofthemoon · 7 years ago

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An Open Letter To A High School Senior,

Today is the day. June 2nd. Graduation Day

Today, you wake up a little earlier - you stare at yourself in the mirror for a little longer, not thinking twice before you put your toothbrush back in the same spot on the counter that you do everyday, grabbing your keys off the table, and rushing out the door, only to make the first period literature class you can't help but dread by only a minute. But today is not everyday. Today is different.

As you begin to prepare for your big day, your phone buzzes - messages from friends, all with your same feelings of astonishment and wonder about the coming day light up the screen - “How did we get here?” How can we be graduating today?” But messages of wonder are soon replaced with those of elation and excitement - and so it won’t hit you yet.

Soon you’ll fly down the stairs and enter your kitchen for the last time as a high school student and your mom won’t be able to help herself from shedding a tear - wondering how her baby grew up so fast. She’ll take your picture and you’ll roll your eyes like you always do when she can’t figure out how to focus her fiver year old iphone. Your dad will make your favorite breakfast - an egg white omelet with bacon and mushrooms - and your little sister will pour the french vanilla coffee from the pot - as you hardly realize it could be one the last times you’ll have breakfast all together with your family. You’ll hurry them along as you hum with anticipation and impatience - excited to arrive at the ceremony that will mark the end of the only life you have known for the last eighteen years - but it still won’t hit you.

As you walk into your high school gymnasium - the same one you’ve walked into a thousand times before - whether for P.E., basketball games, pep rallies, or for your daily trip into only air conditioned part of your school - you’ll see the friendly (and some not-so-friendly) faces of the 400 people you have spent almost every waking moment with for the the last four years. Look around. This is the final time your whole class with be in the same room together - the last time you’ll ever see the boy that always seemed to know too much in chemistry or the girl that would never stop talking in physics. Look around again - take it all in - it won’t hit you yet that it will be the last time you can.

Today will also be the last time you and your friends will see each other in your highschool setting. As you embrace the people that stood by your side everyday for the last four years, all the memories will come flooding back. You’ll remember almost everything - the little things like cramming for the psychology test none of you studied for until the period before or when you snuck out of school to take tips to dunkin donuts when you were supposed to be in biology. You’ll remember the big things too - your first heartbreak and the time your best friends dragged you out of the house with the promise of ice cream and revenge when the only thing you wanted to do was stay in bed and cry or the last night of the summer when you went to see your favorite band in concert and had the best night of your life. From the boy that was your best friend from the first day of freshman year to the girl you started talking to only a few months before today, one theme runs truet - these people, no matter how small the impact - truly changed your life.

Soon enough, the graduation ceremony will begin and before you know it, you’ll hear your name announced by the president of your school for the last time - and so you’ll take your final lap across the gymnasium floor, shake his hand, and receive your diploma, watching as one by one, all the people around you do the same. As the ceremony comes to a close and you tip your head to the sky, throwing your cap in the air, feelings of all different emotions will overtake your body - the most prominent being elation. This is your moment. You have made it. You have graduated. But at the same time, in the back of your mind, you can feel another emotion arising, but you do not want to feel this emotion right now, so you compress it, bury it - and so it still does not hit you.

As you exit the gym, diploma in one hand, flowers in the other, you will begin to understand - knowing that this is the final time you will make the lap across your school’s quad as you rush to take photos with your friends and throw your decorated caps in the air one last time. It might not feel like it right now - but today is truly different - and even though it may not seem like it - your life will never be the same as it is in this moment.

And so my advice to you - a now high school alumni, preparing for the newest chapter in your life - is this:

Live in the moment. Challenge yourself. Enjoy the time you have left with the people that have made your last four years the greatest experience you could have imagined. Embrace your family - and don’t forget to thank them - they are the reason you are the successful person you are today. Take chances and welcome challenges with open arms. Greet your fears with courage. And never be afraid to take the extra shot.

Soak in every moment - you only have a few months left to make memories with your people. And finally, on the day you leave for college - as you walk out of the door of the house that has been your home for the last eighteen years and as you wave goodbye to the friends that have turned into family - it will finally hit you. You will realize that it is not the building of your former high school that you are going to miss, just like it is not your physical house that will be the burden of your sadness as you journey to your new home. Today none of that matters, because today the only thing you will think about and remember is the people that shaped your entire existence - that will be the reason that will make the closing of this chapter so difficult. And so a few months from now, when you’re living your new life, with your new friends, making new memories with new people - never forget your roots.

I hope you take advantage of every opportunity life affords you and make memories that will last a lifetime with people that mean the world to you.

Good luck class of 2018.

Highschool forever.

Much love,

Just another, nostalgic, high school senior

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shadowsofthemoon · 7 years ago

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“I want to say I can’t go on without you, but that isn’t true. I have gone on without you. We have gone weeks and months without talking and I have found myself happy during that time. I thought of you and I missed you, but I also had happiness. But the thing is I don’t want to go on without you. Even though I know that I am able, and able to happily live a life where you only live in my memories, I don’t want to. I don’t need you. I want you, and us and our late night talks which stem from fights and end in jokes. I want you to try to make me laugh when I’m so angry all I can see is red. I want to hate you for doing it, for not taking me seriously even when I know that it’s your way to cheer me up and show me you love me. I want the part of us that is so intertwined and impassioned in each other that we can go days without needing another human soul. You see, I have had life without you, and I know what it entails. I have had adventurous solo road trips and hikes where I sit at the bottom of rocky cliffs staring out at the ocean. I have had drunken flings and nights where my girlfriends and I drink wine until we collapse on the couch. I have laughed without you. I have loved without you. I have had passion with other and I have had heartbreak with others. So believe me when I say that I do not need you, I can do this on my own or with someone else, but you are still a unique and wonderful presence in my life and I want you.”

— Excerpt of a book I’ll never write #187

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shadowsofthemoon · 7 years ago

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time to take over the world

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