I can't believe I'm graduating. Four years have gone in the blink of an eye. Cliche but true. The realization that I'm leaving soon hasn't quite settled. In my mind I know it's happening slowly, as if everything and everyone is slipping inch by inch. A day doesn't go by that I don't imagine what college will be like, on my own entirely for the first time and beyond quick reach of home. I catch myself daydreaming a lot, staring down a familiar school hallway and remembering some silly little thing that happened, or passing through an old classroom and listening to a former teacher with her underclassmen. It's always small random and seemingly insignificant memories which affect me the most. I know I'll get all emotional come graduation. I'm simultaneously dreading and looking forward to it for a whole host of conflicting reasons. I'm sort of in this state of disbelief. Shock maybe, anxiety definitely.

I'm so different from the freshman I was when I entered high school. I don't think I ever talked to anyone back then beyond my group of closed friends. That's changed, miraculously, but I can still be very timid and withdrawn at times. I've got plenty of friends, that's for sure, but no intimate friends I really connect with, and I'm always troubled by that. I feel like I developed so much in four years and yet not enough. I get the nagging sensation that I'm not ready to leave yet, that I'm not mature enough to handle living on my own, that I'll somehow break down unexpectedly and be completely unable to handle myself. It's terrifying and liberating to think of leaving and I know I'll miss my friends and teachers who made high school such an experience for me.

Anyway, I guess I have no reason to complain. I've already gotten into college and decided where I'm going, classes are almost over now and we're just studying for the AP exams, and the weather is finally getting nicer. It feels like some invisible cosmic train is building up momentum and pulling me away from where I'm comfortable, and I love it and hate it at the same time. It's like I'm finally getting comfortable and familiar with my life and I begin enjoying myself, and now it's time to leave.

I'm worried sick sometimes, I wish I had someone to tell these things to, and I wish for just one more year. Anyone care to share their own college-bound experience? If everyone else can handle it, I'm sure I can do it too.