Goodbyes

I've finally gotten to the miserable stage of the end of the year where I feel wishy-washy and nostalgic, and frequently say, "I can't believe it's over," at random intervals throughout the day. I pretty much lied when I said I wasn't nostalgic a few blog posts ago. I'm very nostalgic. It just makes me feel like crap, so I try not to dwell on it.

It was a good year. It was my first year of high school and all, which just seems weird now that I think about it--I've kind of forgotten that I've ever been anywhere but here. Not that I don't remember any other time, but this is what is real now. This school and this schedule and these people: that's who I've been for the past ten months. Now it's just over. Didn't even say a proper goodbye, just walked out of the school building just like any other day. It's too late now, anyway. Now all I've got left to do is focus on next year. I know soon enough that will become my reality, with those classes and those people making up my existence, but for now I just feel... in between. Sooner than that the summer will become my reality, days of boredom and laziness, floating one day to the next without any thoughts except a deep-rooted sense of regret and fear, which I carry around when I'm stuck in the past and have nothing in the present to distract me.

I'm sad, I guess. I'm sad that the year's over. I'm sad about the things I didn't do, and some of the things I did. I'm sad that time is passing and I have to say goodbye, and in just a few years I'll have to say goodbye on a grander scale: I'll leave my school, my home, and my friends and venture into the big bad world by myself. Time passing has always made me deeply, deeply sad, and now is no different. It hurts, though, that I never really said a proper goodbye. I'm not really good at proper goodbyes: they just never seem real to me. Tomorrow I'll wake up and be in the same place I feel like I always have been.

I miss it. I regret. But even through all this quiet, unsettling sadness, I know I don't have a choice but to keep moving forward and focus on the present. Time isn't going to slow down just because I want it to, because I'm afraid of change and afraid of goodbyes, and I have to swallow all the heartbreak I get from these things and just keep moving forward. It won't hurt so badly tomorrow, after all.

But still, for now, I'm sad.