Walking out of school yesterday, I couldn’t help but check the huge senior countdown board that hangs over the long senior hallway. A big ‘14’ quietly waits to be flipped another day closer to May 26. Those orange and black letters have never meant anything to me until now.

These letters mean my grade is leaving. My friends are leaving. I’m leaving.

This realization leads my brain down a train of thoughts all connecting my last four years at Middletown High school. Not only my school days do I find myself thinking about, but just living in the close-knit Middletown community, surrounded by people that I’ve grown up with since I could walk.

Life has become so surreal and seems like it’s just in your face all the time. Decisions pile up and become more difficult to make which can make it hard to feel relaxed.

In only three short months, everyone in my graduating class will be parting ways and starting a fresh, new and scary adventure some place new. Even I will be heading eight hours away to Knoxville so I can start my journey at the University of Tennessee.

So what’s left for us here in Middletown for these next thirteen days of school and three months of summer?

I honestly don’t know what’s waiting here for any of us as the year comes to a close, but I do know that when you’re a senior who is graduating and going away to college every moment with your friends and family count.  Everyone always preaches “these are the best times of your life”, and those words are so seemingly true, yet I find myself so excited for what I have to come.

If I could leave any words of wisdom that my eighteen year old self can come up with, I would say that even though everything is coming to what appears to be a close and so many things are changing in your life, it will be okay. You will get into college.

You will be able to leave home. You will have a future.