Senior year is coming to an end, and more than anything it is just scaring me. Not even just scaring me, keeping me up at night and causing random moments where I want to breakdown and cry. I'm terrified for my future. I'm terrified for what will happen to me. Most of all, I'm terrified that somewhere in my life I made the wrong choice and I have been going down a path that I wasn't meant to go down.
I've put my future on hold at this point. Right now, it's the present that's truly bothering me. The other day in study hall, (referred to as "story hall" by my group of friends), really got my mind racing for the first time about my future in very much a "right now" sense. In 4 months, we will have a new group of three around us all the time. Our gossip will reach their ears first. They will be the shoulders we cry on first. Where does this leave the group who I have come to depend on over the years? Where do we go from here?
We have said all year long that despite the fact we will be all over the state for school, we promise to stay in touch, even if it kills us. How empty are these promises? How solid are our memories? Are they strong enough to keep us in each others' minds once we're gone? Are they deep enough to keep us linked forever as the close friends we've become? Or are we destined to just be dusty photos in an album, occasionally looked at but often forgotten?
So where do we go from here? What happens when we stop living academic lives and start living real lives? What will we do when our children and spouses define who we are, rather than what we are involved in or who we sat with a lunch? Has our school life really prepared us for real life?
I wish I knew the answers to every question my mind has been flooded with lately. For now, however, I will remain satisfied with promises. We have promised each other, in the form of a contract, (very 5th grade, right? none the less, slightly adorable), that we will call or make an effort to call once a week. We will share the types of things we used to share, from boys to music to juicy details on anything and everything. We will, because we did.
We have become friends by making an effort to open our lives to each other, and we will remain friends by doing the same.
Sure, maybe it will be rough, the real world always is, but my promises are true. I know how much these girls have impacted my lives and made me who I am today. Whether or not we remain the "story hall" girls like we are today, they will always be a part of my life because they were the ones who truly made me live.
In a typical fashion, I managed to write a song along these same lines as a gift for these girls at graduation. The chorus has a line like "even when the world seemed to fall around us, we managed to pick up the pieces together. even when our hearts were having a hard time beating, you kept me alive; you kept me breathing." It has never been more true.
I will end this blog on one last note. If anything, there is one quote I want to leave these ladies with:
