“Dearest reader, I’ll let you know when I’m ready. Or maybe you’ll see it in the clouds first.”
I keep looking up.
My neck is killing me. My head hurts. The sun is in my eyes.
I am tired of something. Not this, not you. There is just something worn, something tattered about the way I feel.
My eyes stay fixed on the great blue ceiling.
How could this be? Where did the clouds go?
Nothing about me is assured, or confident, or even a little bit okay with anything happening around me.
I was supposed to come to terms with this ages ago, but I put it off. I spent my time doing anything but. But—now, the clouds are gone. They have parted, like I knew they would.
I just thought it would be different.
I thought I would be the one parting them; I planned to step into the sun and manipulate the rays into a spotlight, as I embarked on the final part of this journey, as I put the bookmark in these pages, my way.
I feel like I skimmed this chapter. All the potential in the world lay in those pages.
Still, I have another chance.
I have about 365 pages left before my life becomes something new. Before I start sprinting toward the future. Before I gain closure on the chapter I won’t want to close.
For now, I place my bookmark here: the final page of junior year. My headache has returned.
I tried to grab the clouds, death-gripping the edges, but they have slipped from my reach, and now I am one page closer to leaving it all behind.
I know there’s supposed to be relief in between the lines, but I’m having a hard time. I will come back from the summer rejuvenated and less pessimistic, I promise you that. I refuse to spend my senior year like this.
This fateful bookmark will hold my place, and when I return, I will have a lot of things to tell you. Stories of my summer, golden fairytales of sunny days, reviews and editorials and opinions galore. Concepts that will sit in my notes app until I have a place to put them for one final year.
One year of stories, that I want to be the best ones yet.
One year of sixth hours, with some of my favorite people in the world.
One year to leave my mark on The Central Trend, to be a reliable leader, to become the upperclassman who introduces a new group of people to the passion for journalism I have discovered in these walls.
I know that I need to make it count, and although the end has been bleak, my next beginning will not be. It will be bright, it will be nostalgia-riddled, soundtracked by the scores of all the great finales.
The clouds parted, even though I don’t feel ready, or sunny, or okay.
So I leave my bookmark here, wedged between the tear-stained pages of this end and my unwritten, ultimate beginning.
