We started 2015 in the safest place we knew: home. We finally had it all figured out. We were seniors, the big kids in town. The friends we had were the ones we knew would have our backs. For the most part, there was nothing to worry about and our only responsibility was to laugh and have fun.
To be honest, the start of 2015 was even better than I could ask for: going out with a bang as the ball dropped in Times Square, surrounded by people that have now became family. For the most part, everyone got accepted to their dream college, or you decided it was best to take a gap year. Maybe you realized defending our country was the way to go. In fact, maybe college wasn't your thing and your calling was elsewhere. Whatever your dreams may have been, they finally started to become reality.
Graduation rolled around the corner like something I've never experienced before. Sitting in those green chairs with sweat dripping down my forehead from the summer heat and listening to our class valedictorian speak felt nothing close to real. The summer was exciting. Thinking about it now, all I see are waves on the shore and so many memories with people I know I can never forget. The summer sun made me forget about the strange feeling that came with graduation and the blues that came with thinking about moving away to college. I'd like to say I was in denial that my life was the closest thing to a rollercoaster. The reality of it all didn't hit me at project graduation, when I had to say goodbye to people I knew I wouldn't see for a long time or simply ever again. It didn't hit me when I packed all my valuables into 10 different boxes and said goodbye to my twin brother who I've never been separated from for more than a week. It hit me when I was laying in my new dorm room staring at the ceiling. I wondered how my life went from kissing the boy I loved on New Years in the basement that everybody couldn't get enough of on Friday nights to such a foreign place I swore I'd never call home.
I think I can speak for a lot of us 2015 graduates when I say that September and even October wasn't all rainbows and butterflies. As for myself, I cried enough tears to fill a small lake. Social media was deceiving; all I saw were pictures of my fellow graduates and maybe even people in my new school looking as if they were having the times of their lives. I was terrified that this dark period would never go away, but like magic and out of nowhere, it did.
Leaving Fairfield University for winter break and walking into my house for the first time to stay longer than a weekend, I could say I was lucky. I walked out of my stinky dorm hall with a smile on my face. Not just because I was leaving for some real food, but because life was for the most part normal again. I was home and I made new friends through a period in my life I'm convinced had to be the hardest I'll ever go through. When I walked into that basement again on December 31, to see the sparkly dresses and faces I knew and loved from home, I could gladly say 2015 was over, and for myself and every other 2015 high school graduate looking back on the past year, we made it. So say hello to a new, (hopefully) not-so-emotional year of 2016!
