Various Photographers

I’m not ready to say bye to them, even if it’s just see you later.

Before I had writing, my passion, my one thing, was figure skating. And it still is my thing, I just have two passions now.

Last weekend, I skated in my second-to-last spring ice show.

Suffice it to say, I have been on the verge of tears or fully sobbing ever since.

The seniors are done. Some go on to skate in college, and they’re not really gone, but their skating careers are soon wrapping up.

While I’ve been sad to see them go each year, it hits harder and harder every year, with this being the finale: the saddest goodbye.

And it happened, and I cried, and my coach is kind of insane for making the final number be “The Circle Of Life” from The Lion King.

Because it is the circle of life, and I can see us in some of the younger skaters, but that doesn’t make it easier.

What I would give to be them, again. To be just beginning a life of frozen memories with my best friends, rather than nearing closer and closer to the last time I tie my skates.

For all of Sunday, the sadness came in waves. A few tears on the car ride to the rink. A lot more while watching various senior group numbers and solos. All while hypocritically telling my fellow juniors not to cry. Then, sobbing alongside Olivia during the finale. Lastly, more random, exhausted crying in the shower.

It’s truly inexplicable, the emotion that has been nagging at me for weeks, and now lingers beside me.

For about 13 years, I have complained about the cold to the same girls, practiced jumps alongside the same girls, supported and felt support from the same girls, and now some of them are leaving.

Now, as I’m finally writing the end of this column, it’s amplified because we’ve launched into the transition from one year of TCT to the next.

Two passions, both defined to me by the people involved with them, and some of my favorite people from each, are leaving. Not leaving, but graduating.

I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I’m not ready.

As I type it, I’m brought to tears again.

I’m not ready to not see Natalie’s face at the rink, and I’m not ready for Ellison to not be there for me to look up to, and I’m not ready to walk into sixth hour not greeted by Rowan emerging from the side room, and I’m surely not ready to read Alex’s final column.

I’m not ready to be the senior, I’m not ready to carry on the traditions and legacies alone, I’m not ready to do it, not alone, but less surrounded with people I love.

As horribly, inexcusably repetitive as it is, I swear I was a freshman yesterday, and they were sophomores.

But the circle stops for no one, and everything is sweet because it’s short.

Thank you, endlessly, for making this goodbye so difficult.