The halls are now filled with an unfamiliar silence coating the minds of those passing through them.
The unfamiliarity of the vast space between the dim, green lockers pinned against the walls creates a new fear within me as I know the next time these halls are painted with this feeling, it will be our absence that paints it.
I thought I was ready.
I mean, I always have been. This is the one thing I’ve always wanted. To grow. To leave. To start again in a new chapter, writing on fresh pages of my book. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been counting down the days until my final year, but as I approach the last six days of this one, I’ve stopped counting.
I’ve stopped counting down every day until the last. I’ve stopped counting every minute until the last class. I’ve stopped counting every hour until that final bell rang. I’ve just stopped counting.
I’ve stopped counting because I’m not ready.
I’m not ready for this year to end for I know the next time I walk through those double doors I will be walking into a chapter of lasts.
I will be walking into my last first day of high school, my last sports season, my last dances, my last spirit days, my last, my last, my last. Until, suddenly, there are no more lasts and I’ve reached the end.
I’ve always known that I would reach this point, but thinking about this three years ago wasn’t as difficult as it is now. Three years ago, I didn’t have the fear of my final year and what the future held for me. I didn’t fear my year of last. I didn’t fear the end.
Though I have been counting down to this moment, the one thing I most know is quickly being ripped away from me, and I’m now trying to hold on.
Because although I dread the unconventional routine of school, I am not ready to let go of it. The unfamiliar silence within the halls I am currently walking through has made me realize that I am not ready to create this vast emptiness. I am not ready to leave. I am not ready to reach the end.
For the past 281 days, I have wished for nothing more than to skip ahead to my final year of high school. Still, as I stand approaching the end of the one I am currently in, I’ve stopped counting down the days in the hopes that, just for a moment, they will last a little while longer.
For this, in my final year to come, there will be no counting down of days, hours, or minutes, only taking in the time I have left and awaiting the new vast silence of the halls left by us.
