From a young age, basically when you start school, you dream about the end of it. You think that once it’s done your life will begin or it will get better or whatever you choose to tell yourself to cope. We all get so caught up in the end of things just to start something new so the vicious cycle begins again. When does it end?
I wished high school was over the moment I stepped on campus as a freshman. I thought this rush of relief and relaxation would overcome me as I wiped my slate and prepared for college. None of that happened. What was left after the end of school was just one question: Now what? In hindsight, I now realize I had raced to the end hoping I would eventually have a high school experience only to be stuck with the fact that my high school experience had zoomed right past me.
What is a high school experience anyway? Is it late night studying and binge drinking coffee? Is it sneaking out to parties and making bad decisions only to do it all over again? Is it getting the person of your dreams and giving them all of you?
Hollywood painted this picture of what high school should be like and middle schoolers actually believe it, at least I know I did. I thought I was going to get that awesome group of friends and go to football games, get that dream person ( at the time I thought it was going to be a guy), achieve greatness in school, and walk out believing that those were the best four years of my life. Yeah…no. Most of those things happened but they were all out of order. I had the friends, but not the date or grades and so on. I can’t say they were awful because I had some great times but they weren’t what I was expecting. The only thing I didn’t account for was the amount of pain that came along with those four years. All the heartbreak, regrets, nights I cried myself to sleep, the loneliness, abandonment, and stress. It’s funny, when I think about the future I forget about all the bad times that will come with the good. I wish to be successful but at what cost?
That’s the looming fear about the future, it’s not just the unknown; it’s the fear of pain. We don’t know what horrors will come to us and that scares the shit out of us, or that’s what I think the answer is. Who looks forward to future pain? But fear is a whole other post.
This is about how it felt leaving behind four years at a place you never thought you would get out of. The way my school did it, we kinda went out in a fizzle. One week everyone is in session then finals (seniors didn’t have to take finals unless otherwise stated), then one last class gathering, one final mass (catholic school), then graduation followed by grad night and boom! over. For a month I kept feeling like I had more to do because it ended so quickly. You don’t realize your mind is loud with thoughts, tasks, due dates, and excitement until there is silence. I never liked when my mind was silent because I felt I had no purpose anymore. I had nothing to do and I just felt worthless; the world had lost some of it’s color.
I spent so much time racing to the end that when I crossed the finish line I had just earned another piece of paper.
99 Problems And Done 