The campfire, where all other fears and problems dissolve in its orange light.

Everyone says that senior year flies, but I never believed it until now. 

Up until now, senior year has inched by. Like any other school year, each day seemed as mundane as the last. The clouds give way to rain, and the drizzle lessens to sunshine. The same boring routine of sitting on my phone in bed and taking runs in the brisk autumn air. 

Then, all of a sudden, my perspective jolted and hung at an angle like a broken picture frame. 

There will be no next time. There won’t be any waiting for the next school year; I will never experience school like this again in just a few short months. Never again will I see the world through the high school lens.

Homecoming. My last huzzah turned from memories in the past to dancing in the moment. Will I ever party with my friends like this? Will we dress up and eat expensive food together in fancy dresses? 

The parade float will not share my artistic touch, kids won’t scream for candy, and parents’ smiles will fade like ink in a beloved book. The bleachers contain the joy of cheering for classmates, screaming our hearts out till my vocal cords give out; can I ever go back to that again?

The sand has almost fallen, and the end breaches the horizon not too far off in the distance. Unable to do anything, my destiny races to me like a falling star, bright and blazing. 

I am a sentimental person. My desk is filled with bottle caps, rocks, old broken pencils, and keychains from my childhood. Letting these objects go would be like throwing away a part of myself. 

So to live my life as the graduating class of 2024, saying goodbye to all the people I’ve known for six, eight, or even twelve years, feels like my purpose, and my story feels like it will be finished.  

I long to keep everything the same, even if it’s a class with disruptive teens just trying to have fun. I may have never understood why the bland jokes meant so much or how interrupting the teacher to take phone calls had become a priority.  What I want is to keep laughing, to see the smiles, and to make the puns. 

We all at one time or another knew how we were stunted by the school system, or how a reputation to uphold made us crack under pressure. Sure, it was easy to point at mistakes and say how bad the problem was, but that endurance made us stronger together. 

I typed what I typed with complete honesty because speaking it was so much harder. Here, you people can see that my experiences are equal to nothing in the grand scheme of things. I may be tired, but don’t let my journal entries of fireside speeches get in the way of how you see me. 

I’m just a kid, expressing myself through hate and showing love through passion, tears, and shouting. I may say it now, but there’s no other class I would have suffered with. Change scares me even more, so my memories will always contain the class of 2024. 

My wish is to continue past graduation. What I place in a picture frame will contain all that I love and hate. Down the road, when I look back on this year, it will be you I remember. All the hate, all the love, all the suffering, all the frustration, all the cheers, all the crying, and all the things we did. 

I will take the good with the bad because that’s what I will long for when it all inevitably ends. 

I love you all.