BYE BYE BYE
By Eleana Chiang
I have a confession to make—an undisclosed piece of my soul I’ve guarded since the first day I walked the AHS campus as a wide-eyed freshman, a secret that became increasingly difficult to keep as I trudged through four years of laughter, tears, triumphs, and disappointments.
I love this place, and I’m going to miss it.
Where do I even begin? I’m going to miss the classes I bash daily, the classmates I complain to, the teachers I never thanked. The “BFF”s who’ve drifted, the track workouts I dreaded, the life I never appreciated. The friends who’ve stuck around, the few constants in my ever-changing world. Yeah, that last one is by far the hardest. But I’ve found a way to cope with it, and I trust that, with time, the others will fall into place as well.
I absolutely suck with goodbyes. The word itself is kind of taboo for me, with its weight of finality and that sinking sense of permanence. I prefer “see you later”—it promises more to come, reassures me that there will be a tomorrow. The problem now? With the end of mandatory, day to day communication at AHS, it seems that there may not be a later. There may not be another chance to express those embarrassingly human emotions I’ve kept bottled up inside for so long. And that realization alone makes leaving impossible. Except it’s not—so many people have gone before us, and they seem to have adjusted perfectly fine.
And, hard as it is to believe, we will, too. Because of the same set of reasons that make graduation so heartbreaking in the first place: the multitude of lessons we’ve learned from our love-hate relationship with high school. While this step towards independence is no doubt a daunting first, we must not forget the plethora of equally frightening firsts that have rocked our worlds in the past four years. In a sense, these trials have prepared us for the ultimate test of courage, strength, and friendship: graduation.
It shouldn’t be goodbye. Not if we’ve learned what we were supposed to. Not if the people we miss are worthy of that sentiment. Because true friends don’t break that easily. No distance can erase the memories forever imprinted in our hearts, the ones that have given us both confidence in ourselves and faith in our friends, the ones that promise to never let a simple lack of proximity be the end of such a beautiful bond. The famous Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
With that, I’m ready to leave. Equipped with the courage AHS has instilled in me, I’m prepared to part ways with the classmates I’ve seen nearly every day for the last decade. And I do so with strength, knowing that the people who matter are never more than eleven numbers away—at most a “1” and an area code more than they’ve been for as long as I can remember.
By Eleana Chiang
I have a confession to make—an undisclosed piece of my soul I’ve guarded since the first day I walked the AHS campus as a wide-eyed freshman, a secret that became increasingly difficult to keep as I trudged through four years of laughter, tears, triumphs, and disappointments.
I love this place, and I’m going to miss it.
Where do I even begin? I’m going to miss the classes I bash daily, the classmates I complain to, the teachers I never thanked. The “BFF”s who’ve drifted, the track workouts I dreaded, the life I never appreciated. The friends who’ve stuck around, the few constants in my ever-changing world. Yeah, that last one is by far the hardest. But I’ve found a way to cope with it, and I trust that, with time, the others will fall into place as well.
I absolutely suck with goodbyes. The word itself is kind of taboo for me, with its weight of finality and that sinking sense of permanence. I prefer “see you later”—it promises more to come, reassures me that there will be a tomorrow. The problem now? With the end of mandatory, day to day communication at AHS, it seems that there may not be a later. There may not be another chance to express those embarrassingly human emotions I’ve kept bottled up inside for so long. And that realization alone makes leaving impossible. Except it’s not—so many people have gone before us, and they seem to have adjusted perfectly fine.
And, hard as it is to believe, we will, too. Because of the same set of reasons that make graduation so heartbreaking in the first place: the multitude of lessons we’ve learned from our love-hate relationship with high school. While this step towards independence is no doubt a daunting first, we must not forget the plethora of equally frightening firsts that have rocked our worlds in the past four years. In a sense, these trials have prepared us for the ultimate test of courage, strength, and friendship: graduation.
It shouldn’t be goodbye. Not if we’ve learned what we were supposed to. Not if the people we miss are worthy of that sentiment. Because true friends don’t break that easily. No distance can erase the memories forever imprinted in our hearts, the ones that have given us both confidence in ourselves and faith in our friends, the ones that promise to never let a simple lack of proximity be the end of such a beautiful bond. The famous Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
With that, I’m ready to leave. Equipped with the courage AHS has instilled in me, I’m prepared to part ways with the classmates I’ve seen nearly every day for the last decade. And I do so with strength, knowing that the people who matter are never more than eleven numbers away—at most a “1” and an area code more than they’ve been for as long as I can remember.