Final Chapters

Izel Nava

Editorial Team Member

My Junior year ends in less than a month. I imagine my graduation cap weighing me down as I shuffle across a stage. I can’t stand the thought of having regrets but my head is full of them. What if I regret not working hard enough? What if I regret not making more friends? What if I regret not going to more parties? What is the “high-school experience” and have I wasted three years not living it?

I can’t help but feel restless. Like there's a fire inside of me I don’t know what to do with, and with every second, minute, and hour that fire gets less bright. I think of my sister, a blank slate of teenage angst. She’s lived more life than me at three years younger, and I can’t help but be jealous of her age and aggression. She has time I don’t have and I’m panicking about what I should do with what I have left. I can’t put on my prom dress without feeling sick. It's my second-to-last dance until I’m an adult. I don’t feel like an adult.

Now that I’m almost eighteen, I can't describe it other than underwhelming. Jobs, college applications, finals, and recommendation letters pile on top of each other, digging the grave of my youth.I don’t like the idea of starting over. Especially without the people I grew up with. I know I’ll stay in touch with my closest friends, but what if high school is the only thing keeping us together? We’ll all grow up and get careers and pursue our educations, and years down the line maybe they’ll start a family and the only thing connecting us is the year I have left with them.

That and the little I remember from our respective childhoods. In elementary school, we used to have a banquet where we’d perform a song in front of all the parents at the end of the year. It was usually Count on Me by Bruno Mars. We were less than four feet tall, with missing teeth and lisps. But we’re not as snot-nosed and loudly obnoxious as we were ten years ago. Now we’re driving, taller and confident. All making our peace with the fact that we’ll never be kids singing on the stage, instead walking across it.