Photo by Misty Hall.
I just graduated.
It took a while to sink in. It wasn’t until I was in the amphitheater after the ceremony, and everyone was leaving that I felt this moment of panic, because I didn’t say goodbye to everyone, and I had only just realized that, unlike previous years, I won’t be seeing these people at the end of the summer.
I’ve been at OVS since I was 5. With all of the change in my life, OVS was the one thing that never did. For thirteen years, I’d attend September through June, and I’d know my teachers, and my classes, and my friends.
That constant has been disrupted. I now will be embarking on a new journey, to find a new constant. I will be having so many firsts and milestones.
However, what’s now prompting the tears streaming down my face and the sorrow present in my soul are the lasts I’ve had to have in the past weeks.
The last time I sat in the library with my friends was Thursday night. The last time I rode my horse, Rebel, was last week. This is the last article I’ll write for On The Hill as Editor-in-Chief. My last journalism class was last Thursday; that was the hardest, most agonizing last.
It all ended so quickly. With a couple of steps, a handshake, and the pass of a diploma my constant was gone. I am no longer a Spud, or, an active one anyway. I can no longer say “I go to OVS.”
I am not scared of the future, nor the uncertainty it holds. I do not mourn the safety blanket that has now been ripped off me. I am not fearful of the adult world.
What I mourn is who and what have lived in this microcosm for the past thirteen years, and I fear they will not transfer into the macrocosm of the future.
That in the flurry of living, growing, and doing, those people and those things will become lost, I will become lost. What is now my present, what is so vitally important to me, will one day no longer be my present, but my past.
OVS was my present and my future, but now it is wholly and irrevocably my past. That microcosm held all of my memories, experiences, and opportunities, and this is my goodbye to it, yet I have no idea how to say it.
It kills me to leave, no matter how much I have protested, grumbled, and complained, OVS is, or was, my home.
That’s what kills me. That I am in the grey area between is and was. For thirteen years, it was is. But now, it is was.
Will those people and things that were in the is still be with me in the was? I don’t know, and it’s terrifying.
But, I am so, so thankful for that was. It may no longer be my is, but everything that lived inside it has shaped me into the person I am now. That was allowed me to grow, prepared me for whatever my next is is.
I hope I can find the people of my was in my is. That the memories and experiences of was guide me during my new is.
Thank you and goodbye to my is of OVS, for you are now my was. I will forever miss you, and I hope to see you in my is.