School is back, and many of us are finally seniors. This means we are expected to love, commemorate, and embrace senior year and all that high school has been. However, many of us have been eagerly awaiting the final day of walking through the halls- pushing and shoving our way to the parking lot, never to return. Some of us have not had amazing high school experiences straight out of an ABC Family rom-com. Some of us have struggled, stressed, cried, and counted minutes until we could move on to another path. Not all of us feel the desire to get matching tattoos and write "HAG BFF" on people's yearbooks. Despite what much of society preaches to seniors, that's okay.

There are countless articles online and in magazines discussing the need to make friends, throw differences aside, hug, be real, and all but turn your class into a hippie convent. This may be possible, and even joyful, for some, but many of us are already mentally checked out and have no care to even be in the same room as the girl who started the rumor that ruined your junior year. Personally, I don't care to become friends with those I haven't yet. Thanks for liking my tweet, but that doesn't mean I have to like your face. The idea that we'll never see each other again, so we should be a bundle of joy and ridiculously happy to see everyone every day, is outdated. I prefer to think, I'll never see you again, so there's no point in becoming friends now. Maybe this is morbid or sad, but I'm happier thinking this way and I know many people who are. The end of an important stepping stone in life is different for everyone. Each senior began Freshman year with some friends, and are probably leaving with a whole new group. Just because someone was in your past, doesn't mean they should be in your future.

Society should not put pressure on a select few to enjoy a period of time that is already filled with applications, acceptances, rejections, change, and anxiety. The people who say senior year should change your life and bring you friends have either A) forgotten what high school is like or B) secretly spent their time stuck in some serious Freaky Friday situation. It's okay not to like some people and to be eager to move on. Not everyone is meant to thrive in high school; some of us are supposed to learn and leave. (It's like a hit and run, but not as gruesome...usually...)

There was a time when I couldn't get out of bed to brush my teeth without crying. I was late to my classes because I hid waiting for the halls to clear because I was so scared of the shouting and the people. I don't want to remember this. I want to celebrate that my life is different, that my crippling depression is gone, and that I have very little time in the place that added to my misery. I shoul be allowed to finish strong and look forward to the next chapter without having societal and peer expectations thrown at me. It's alright if I don't want to go to parties and would rather spend my lunch time in the library. I don't do this for anyone but myself and my happiness. That's okay. Now that I'm almost done with high school, I know who I am and how I want to live; I refuse to change this after reading an article about buying an Instax camera to take pictures with the math teacher who failed me, pretending everything's okay. I'm allowed to just survive and look forward. No one needs to tell me otherwise.

So, for all those in need of permission to merely get through, beat the clock, and stop pretending... Here it is. Eat lunch in the library, befriend the teacher you like and not who everyone else likes, forgive and make peace without the need to become besties, and get through senior year your way. You don't have to be the happy go lucky article, you have to get through.