The end's not near, it's here.

WARNING: Overly emotional/unstable  teenager 
On the morning of my last day of high school I was at my train station, and I walked past the boy who gave me a rose on my last day of primary school. It got me thinking. On that final day of primary school it felt like the world was coming to an end. My friends, who I had been with since I started kindergarten aged 4, were all going separate ways. It was the most important day of my life thus far, and we all promised to be best friends forever, to have reunions, and to always come back and visit the teachers. Fast forward to Year 12, and I laugh when I think of primary school, and how insignificant the last day of Year 6 was. I've never gone back to visit, and I only keep in touch with about 5% of my Year 6 classmates.

Will I look back on the final day of Year 12 in the same way, 6 years from now?
No. With these people I'm genuinely going to be life-long friends. With these people I've laughed until I thought I was going to die from chest pains, cried about two Olympic Pool's worth of tears, matured into a reasonably adult-like 17 year old, been excessively immature, have had many "low points", however endless amounts of amazing, happy memories that I'll be thinking about when I'm an old grandma sitting on a rocking chair on the back porch of my retirement village. The fact that we've all figured out who we are together, and still all remain close friends means that our friendships will stand the test of time. Even if I'm not going to be seeing them five days a week! Although cheesy, the "Graduation Song" by Vitamin C has a lot of truth to it.
"As we go on, we remember/All the times we had together/And as our lives change, from whatever/We will still be, friends forever"

Yesterday was our graduation, and it was a really beautiful ceremony. We had the chamber orchestra play, heard amazing speeches from peers and our year adviser, and received our final portfolios. At the time I didn't think it was really the end. We've still got to complete our final exams, we have our formal, presentation day, and we'll be seeing each other countless times in the future. It was at home when it hit me, and I started crying. I'm not going to see these people every day, like I have for the past however many years. Some I may never see again, teachers included. Reading the amazing messages that people wrote in the back of my yearbook made me realise how precious the friendships that you form and consolidate in high school really are. While graduation isn't the end of these friendships, will they ever be a strong as they were during high school? I really hope will, because the relationships I have made with these people are definitely worth keeping forever.

Finishing high school is like being thrown into deep water. You struggle at first, but then eventually find your way back to the surface. For that I'm nervous and excited. Now it's all up to me. How I spend my days; how I spend the rest of my life. That's what's both scary and exciting- I can now begin to fulfill the dreams that have been swirling around in my head since Year 7, or Kindergarten for that matter. The scary part is that the onus is all on me. Will I disappoint myself? What if the path is rocky? But then the excitement kicks in. You only learn from your mistakes.Things won't always fall into place, and sometimes alternative routes to my goals may lead to even better things.  The world is now my oyster, and it's time to make things happen.

Here's to the future!