As we walked through the doors on our first day of school, the teachers greeted us with love and compassion.

We said goodbye to our mothers and fathers and were welcomed in to a classroom of knowledge.

Peers lingered around as the world we now lived in carried a gentle aura and few worries.

We searched until we found the perfect desk adjusted to our height with our names taped to the top.

Every year this happened, until one day, we outgrew these desks and the timeworn teachers outgrew us.

A little further down the road, we entered into a classroom not only full of knowledge, but full of discovery as well.

This was a time filled with finding ourselves, our worth, and finding our purpose in this world.

We also discovered "hurt" and what it felt like to be let down by the people who we never thought would do us in such a way.

I found God in these couple years and figured out what it was like to live with him. As did many of us.

Then, we moved on. we were separated from the people we had always been close to and dispersed throughout more people who we would eventually grow closer with.

I remember opening up the car door, looking at my mother, and saying, "I don't want to go." I was frightened and unaware; unaware of the beautiful creatures I would stumble upon and unaware of the blessings that would be sent in my direction.

I met a teacher during these years, a teacher who exhaled loveliness through the air with every breath she took, and a teacher who brought an understanding for my existence.

It was our little safe haven between adolescence and adulthood, innocence and corruption.

In this place we began to catch a glimpse of what the real world truly consists of and what I saw petrified me. I cast the thought away thinking we had forever until we had to face that harsh reality. Yet suddenly here I stand, in the threshold of this world and the fear comes flooding back. Worried by the past, intimidated by the present, and terrified of the future. But then I stop and think, what have all these years of learning been for if not this very moment? The laughter, the tears, the lessons, they have carried us to where we are now and will continue to guide us into this scary, new place, and this is something I take great comfort in.

So here I am, in this scary, new place and I have realized something important. People are only people and yourself is all you really have. When it is three in the morning and you are sitting on the bathroom floor, alone, you have to pull yourself together. Not anyone else.

When you are driving around late at night into the wee hours of the morning and you do not have a destination…when you feel as if you need to escape this world, but you do not know how, realize that everything will be okay.

Everything will be okay because the birds are still chirping and the hearts are still beating. I know the moon is out right now, but the sun will rise in the morning, and we will try again.