It's the moment I've waited for my entire life: high school graduation. The anticipation has been growing and growing my entire high school, nay, the past 12 years (not even including preschool or kindergarten) of my elementary, middle and then finally high school career. I remember being a small freshman seeing the seniors roaming the halls of the library* and looking up** in awe. I became best friends with an even smaller eigth grader and a much taller freshman and we dreamed of our upcoming days of being seniors and graduating. It's a lifetime away right?

*If you've read an article by me before, you know I was homeschooled. I went to a co-op where a few college style high school classes were held in a small Christian library. The library is the size of a typical school's cafeteria and library smushed together. Upside: we had couches everywhere so naps seemed to be encouraged in-between classes.

**I'm short and have been my entire life. I have to look up to basically everyone I meet. I guess you're also supposed to "look up" in the metaphoric sense, but let's stick with the short thing. Most seniors in 2014 were weird.

Flash forward four years and here you have me. I finally graduated high school about a week ago. Nothing from this past year of school felt real until that moment when it was time to stand on stage with my fellow seniors and turn my tassel***. The preparations, the yearbook stress, the senior parties, all of it seemed like just another school year. Even walking into the church, standing in line with some of my best friends, walking up onto that stage holding my best friend's hand as we both almost threw up from stress, and it all still didn't seem real. As we ran off stage to Eye of the Tiger (not my first, second, or third choice for an exit song but it's too late now right?), all screaming at the top of our lungs like banshees, I was being hit with the realization that this thing I've been looking for my entire life was over. I suddenly wanted to cry. Like, HUGE wailing tears. Only questions: were they happy or sad, and if they're sad, why am I sad? This was the moment where I semiofficially became an adult. A whole chapter of my life is over. The grief of that moment I don't think I'll ever be able to explain.

***As I've been sitting at this desk for the past hour, drinking my weirdly delicious "green thyme" juice and listening to the most random music I can think of for inspiration, I've been agonizing over which moment was THE moment. I think the juice was the hard part of my process. WHO PUTS PARSLEY IN GREEN JUICE?? IT'S SO STRANGELY OVERPOWERING.

All in all, graduation day was one of the best days of my life. I will remember it for the rest of my life, no questions about that. I'm going to try to remember this feeling for when I graduate college because I have a small intuition it'll be worse. I cannot wait to start college this August, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't repeat high school for all the money in the world. BUT. I will admit, I miss the simplicity of high school. I miss seeing my friends everyday and more importantly, I miss the guarantee of seeing them in the fall.

SO, friends who bother to read my articles, WE'RE GONNA HANG OUT THIS SUMMER, K? K.