For months leading up to my high school graduation, I had expected to be an emotional wreck. Granted, I never cry or show much emotion—not at sad romantic movies or videos of puppies and babies cuddling, etc. My friends have actually deemed me pretty heartless. But I always just assumed graduating, leaving all that I have known for the past 14 years, would make me tear up a bit.
Every senior or graduation-related event had instilled in me this intangible yet crippling melancholy. Senior pictures, senior assemblies, final sports events, the last pep rally and receiving our caps, gowns and yearbooks. Everything had this eerie sense of finality to it, and it felt like my sadness was building up and crying would be inevitable on the evening of graduation.
But, my graduation was last week. And, as I stood there in my decorated cap and gown with cords hanging heavy around my neck, surrounded by all my peers from the Class of 2016 for the last time, I stopped feeling sad. The sadness had unknowingly been replaced by excitement, anticipation, a happy sort of nostalgia. And so I didn't cry that night. I didn't cry in my seat in the middle of the football field or while listening to my friends and peers give inspiring speeches. I didn't cry while I bounced on the balls of my feet waiting in line to climb the steps of the stage. I didn't cry as I walked across the stage and received my diploma. I didn't cry as the sun set on my senior year and our class president urged us to turn our tassels. I didn't even cry when we all clumsily threw our caps into the air, or when my best friends and I embraced after the ceremony or when my father gave me a toast at dinner afterward. No, I didn't cry at all on graduation night. That night was reserved for happiness.
Where and when did I cry then? If senior year has taught me anything, it is that tears come when you least expect them. So no, there were no long-awaited raindrop sized tears streaming down my face that evening. I cried, instead, in my car on a random Tuesday when I drove past my best friend's mom in the center of town and realized, in a few months, that would never happen again. I cried when I was walking through the halls of my high school for one of the last times and my friend turned to me and said, "I feel like we don't belong here anymore." I cried when I drove past the house of a boy I went to elementary school with and it dawned upon me that, very shortly, I would be at a point in my life when I didn't live in this same small town with these same people I had known for more than a decade. Graduating is not the sad part, senior year coming to an end is, in itself, not sad (it's, in fact, more of a blessing). Leaving, and the knowledge that everyone you know and love is also going to be leaving is the sad part. But there is solace in the fact that soon I will be embarking on a new adventure, discovering and learning and exploring and meeting new people that enrich my life as much as the old. So, until the end of August, when there will undoubtedly be more tears, I will use this last summer before college to spend time with the people I love and to make memories I can carry with me forever. But I strongly advise everyone to beware of those unexpected and arbitrary moments when the all-encompassing idea of change begins to set in because the tears will inevitably follow.
