Finality and Change and Way Too Many Feelings

I feel so much as I prepare to graduate. Guilt for being gone so much this summer. Guilt for being excited to leave my family and start my own life. As excited as I am to move on and as ready as I am to move on from high school, though, I can't believe it's ending. Life at home is all I've ever known. The same people, the same places, the same routines, day after day, month after month, year after year, and now it's all changing and I'm moving on. I'll start moving in a different direction than my family, and they will move without me. We will stay connected forever because that is what a family is, but we'll grow separately. It is inevitable and necessary. But I'm growing into the unknown while they are growing into the familiar, and all of this uncertainty terrifies me.

I hate leaving all of my friends too. Saturday was a day of grad party hopping and I just love all of these kids so much. Senior week changed everything. I've talked about this with several people, and we've come to the general consensus that senior week brought us together. We are more unified as a class now than we've ever been before. We say hello in the halls, we go to each others' parties, we celebrate no more school together, we bemoan AP exams together. I've never felt this connected with my peers, and now I'm leaving them, some never to see again. How can I leave these people?

It's the crushing blow of finality that's bothering me. I will never be in grade school again. I will never live at home again. I will never be treated as a little kid again. It's time to grow up and be brave and take care of myself. I'm going to make mistakes, and that's scary. I'm trying to tell myself that it's ok, but it's hard to admit that I will inevitably fail.

There are a lot of things I'm excited about and I have lots of happy feelings about growing up, but I just don't feel like talking about them. Sometimes letting the fear and guilt and uncertainty control me for a teeny bit makes it easier to move on and be excited. Does that even make sense?

Sincerely, mad