I’m down to the last five days of my high school education.

Wow.

To be honest, I hadn’t really noticed until today. Up until now, I’d just continued to go through the motions of school: going to class, not going to class, doing the minimal amounts of homework associated with senior year… But now that the yearbooks have come out, and people have started asking me to sign them, I’m realizing how big this is: these next two weeks are the last during which I’m regularly going to see all these people. Some of them, people I’ve known since 3rd grade, when I was just a scared little 9-year-old, fresh from Minnesota. After this, everything’s going to change…

Tonight, Dessert Theatre 2008 opens. Tomorrow, it will close. My last production at Theatre CHS will be over - no more tech weeks, no more “dressing to the nines” on opening night. The lights will go down, the costumes put away, and the goodbyes said - and it will be over. Every Dessert Theatre closing night for the past three years, I’ve watched the seniors stand around, saying goodbye to the Black Box. Most crying. And I always think, “I don’t want to be that senior. I don’t want to say goodbye - I couldn’t handle that. I still have three years left here.

two years.

one.”

And now, there aren’t any more years left. I can’t just say, “There’s still next year. I don’t have to deal with it yet,” because this is it - I have to deal with it now. Now’s the time to say goodbye to all of these people - some old friends, others new - but all people I’ve realized I feel connected to on a level I didn’t image was possible. People that got me through the drama and trauma of high school life - who confided in me, and helped me through all those seemingly insurmountable roadblocks. People I’ve loved, people I’ve hated. People that mean the world to me. People.

I know I’m moving on to bigger and better things - goodness knows I’ll meet new friends, create new bonds. Grow even more into the person that I am. But these people around me now - they have guided me and shaped me more than I’ll ever truly realize. I don’t know how to thank them for that. There’s no way to thank them enough. I can’t even promise I’ll remember their names and faces ten years from now. But I know I’ll never forget what they meant.

So thank you, everyone. You won’t be forgotten.