We’re two weeks into January, second semester, 2022, my graduation year—and it still feels spiritless. It feels like life is moving in slow motion with no foreseeable ending, no definite conclusion.

I still don’t know where I’m going to college. 

My indecisiveness is making every decision one that is nearly unreachable. I can barely pick out my outfits in the mornings—I’ve worn slippers to school for the past week. My life is a repeat of the same Spotify playlist with the same mediocre songs. I’m so bored of today’s music that I now prefer to drive in silence, to only listen to the rustle of my car and the creek of my windshield wipers and the never-ending knocking of my blinkers.  

My last dance team Nationals is a month away. Last time I checked, we still had several months until the plane ticket date. It feels like time is moving at an unstoppable pace, a pace that I’m not able to catch up to. It feels like time is purposely avoiding my will, running away from me—every aspect of time aside from my alarm clock.

I’ve gotten into every college I’ve applied to. Yet, somehow, I still feel as if I’m missing something, or perhaps it’s just the fact that it’s making my decision even more difficult. I have no idea where I’ll be a year from now. I have no idea who my friends will be, who my one comfort person I can talk to about anything and everything will be. 

Maybe it’ll still be my best friend from high school, but maybe not. Maybe it will be a complete stranger living thousands of miles away, someone who doesn’t know I exist.

I feel like I’m drowning in my last hoorah of high school like I’m just here with no notion of what tomorrow brings. My weekends are being stripped away with hour-long practices, and when I’m not practicing, I spend my time catching up on sleep and writing stories for this very site.

The last time I walk in sixty seconds late to first hour, throw my parka on the coat rack, and whip out my laptop on the beige couch in Room 139 is only months away. It feels like an eternity from now—we have college visits, Nationals, and spring break all in between—but I know that time will slip away just as quick as first semester did. 

So I’ll continue to spend my days editing, analyzing poetry in AP Lit, solving psychology riddles, coding what seems like impossible apps, doing yoga in fifth hour, and soaking up TCT meetings until the very end. Because that’s all I have right now.

I’ll keep ordering the same coffee order from Starbucks and drinking the same two Celsius flavors over and over and attempting to make the most out of what I have left. 

Because time is moving faster than I could’ve ever anticipated.

– Avery