Seventeen Forever

Today is goodbye.

Goodbye new friends that made me so happy this short semester.
Goodbye few friends that saved me from being alone all year.
Goodbye stupid Claremont and your old people
Goodbye teachers I love.
Goodbye teachers I hate.
Goodbye homework.
Goodbye church and sunday school class.

I'll see some of you again this fall. Most of you, I'll never see again for the rest of my life.

But more than that, I'm turning eighteen tomorrow. I will be an adult. For years I have impatiently waited to pass this milestone, longing for the freedoms but now I quietly reflect.

The end of my childhood.

The beginning of the rest of my life.

If I can get old enough to be an adult, its dawned on me that I can get old enough to be old and die. Eighteen is nothing. The years will fly by and suddenly I'll be forty with early wrinkles doing God knows what, living God knows where.

Frightening to grow up. Am I ready? It looks like it's not up to me to decide. Peter Pan is only fictional. I won't be seventeen forever but perhaps I'll remember this feeling, remember this moment.

Goodbye.