And with a final exhale, she faces it head-on for the first time. She’s avoided it for so long, but it’s caught up to her: the end of the beginning.
To live a life so abundant with such bounteous and widespread emotional opulence and eudaemonia, she feels eternally beholden. To what or whom, she is unsure; perhaps life as a whole is the subject of her affections.
Her attempted equanimity is, indeed, something she has quarreled with on a number of occasions; nevertheless, she does all she knows how: she loves.
She loves everything around her with such vigor, but, more so, she holds such a deep adoration for every person around her.
Each person, each memory, each conversation; they will forever remain engrained in the composition of her soul.
And so, she greets the inevitable end of the beginning with an all-consuming sense of dreadful anticipation.
For as long as I can remember, I have loved far more deeply than I could ever even dream to express.
I have never found as much comfort in anything as I have in the simple joys of life, and many of those joys have been found in the people around me.
High school was never meant to be something so hard to leave. I was supposed to be so eager and ready to leave the building I’d spent so many hours in—test-taking, imbuing seemingly useless information into my already-exhausted brain, and, on more than one occasion, crying—but I’m the farthest thing from it.
The beginning of my life is nearing its end, and that is absolutely terrifying.
Life is becoming too real, too fast. There is nothing more petrifying to me than the passage of time; I was—and still am—so scared.
I’ve been scared of getting older and of the eventual obsolescence of the things I hold so dear.
I’ve been scared of losing my ability to love sincerely and allow others’ love a place in me.
I’ve been scared of everything I don’t know to be true.
Regardless, I have always had my family and the arts in my corner; they have been the two constants in my life that I never overlooked. I am the youngest in a family of people who have accomplished so many amazing things, but I felt I never had my thing.
And then, as time went on, I joined The Central Trend. It’s another family, another outlet for my art.
And, over these two painfully short years as a part of this new family, I have written 56,965 words.
56,965 words of expression I’d never had a home for.
56,965 words of validation for the feelings I’d never known exactly how to classify.
56,965 words to express the utter enamor and infatuation I have gained for the world I live in.
I would say that I have never been good at expressing my feelings, but I would be lying—sometimes, I think I’m a bit too good at expressing my feelings. I am too emotional, too soft, too vulnerable to keep any of it hidden.
I always thought that was my fatal flaw: feeling too deeply.
The past year or so, in particular, has shown me otherwise.
It is not a flaw; rather, it is an incredible, extraordinary gift.
And this family gave me the opportunity to share that.
Because of my time here—both as a part of The Central Trend and as Forest Hills Central in its entirety—I am no longer in fear of the change to come.
I hope to have moved somebody in my time here, even in some way so minuscule as to be no more than a fleeting thought.
Because a fleeting thought still leaves a trace to those with eyes to see it.
All I want is to leave behind something a little bit more loved than it was before.
And you, The Central Trend, as well as everybody I’ve had the blessing to have met in the confines of Room 139/140, have most certainly been loved.
Sincerely yours until the end,
Eva LaBeau
To be loved is to be changed—something which holds no levity in her mind as she is made painfully conscious of the magnanimous nature of the world in her regard.
Wistfulness and wherewithal in hand, she takes the first steps into the next book of her life.
It hits her in one seraphic and halcyon moment: while the beginning may be over, it is surely not the true end.
And, for that, the end of the beginning isn’t so scary anymore.
