End of Beginning

That she wrote,
"Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward"

Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers,

"Even if you are not ready for the day,
it cannot always be night."

120 days until my last day of high school. 160 days until graduation. 256 days until my 18th birthday. I keep counting, as if somehow the numbers will slow down if I watch them closely enough.

Nobody warns you about this part of growing up—the strange limbo where you're standing at the edge of everything familiar, staring into a future that's equally exciting and terrifying. Soon I'll be waking up in a dorm room, on the other side of the world, alone… alone?

I'm not ready.

Not ready for the silence of being alone. Not ready for decisions that feel too big for my seventeen years. Not ready for feelings that I can't even imagine yet. Not ready to trade the comfort of everything I know for everything I don't.

You know that moment? When you can't tell if your eyes are open or closed, when you can hear nothing beyond the sound of your own breathing. The kind that makes you forget there was ever light at all? When your quiet thoughts become so loud, they echo across the empty space of your room?

The last time I'll walk into that familiar exam room, heart racing, pen gripped too tight. Then the last time I'll walk out, either relief or regret weighing on my shoulders. The last inside joke with friends who've known me longer than I've known myself. The last "see you tomorrow" that isn't really tomorrow.

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory.

That's what scares me the most. Not the big changes—those you can see coming from afar. It's the small moments that go unnoticed. The last time you fall asleep in you childhood bed without realizing it's the last time. The last inside joke in the back of math class. The last time you're out with your friends late, promising to sleep early "next time."

The last time everyone's together in one place, not knowing it's the last time.

New firsts will replace old lasts. What's new will be come what's familiar, then become memories themselves. New relationships will bloom and fade. New places will be what I call home.

Yet, the sun never asked if I was ready to rise.

You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

— Gwendolyn Brooks