As another school year slowly comes to a close, classes ending, finals being taken, we slowly fall into that place of questioning. What am I going to do? What does the future hold? Who am I now, and who will I be? That sounds way too deep considering I still have a semester until I graduate and throw myself into the big and terrifying world of being a real life adult with a real life job and real life responsibilities, but that doesn't mean I don't think about it. Everything is constantly changing around me. All of my friends are graduating this semester, and I have no idea what I'll do without them. Of course, they aren't just vanishing into thin air as soon as they cross that stage (friendships don't work like that), but it'll still be scary to not have them around me at school every day. I'll have to get a job because I've been getting by way too long on money saved up from past jobs. I have to get ready to move out of the house I've lived in for almost my entire life (yes, I still live with my parents, okay?). Not that these things aren't exciting. They're just endings.
If there's one thing I've learned over the course of my short (though clearly wise) 21 years of life, however, it's endings don't come without beginnings. My first semester of college was horribly toxic, and when I dropped out, that ending led to the beginning of the first semester at a new college that I love. Countless friendships have ended in ways I wish they hadn't, but new and better things came out of them. As long as you are moving forward and living your life, there will never be a true ending. All you have to do is see how you can turn the closing of one door into the opening of a new one. All of those things might be ending, but new things are blooming out of them. I get to work hard to graduate in the fall and move to somewhere I love. I get to start new and exciting, lasting relationships. New adventures are on the horizon!
Let's put it this way, with a famous Alyssa Hascall metaphor. A door may close, but it never locks. All you have to do is open it again and see what is waiting on the other side.
