Endings.
Cracking, snapping of hearts and words that snap into brains with a little too much heat, a little too much poison. A little too much hurt shoved into brittle bones. Lost paths, hidden ones, shifting ones. Where to go when you can’t see past your own footsteps?
Endings.
Balancing pain with more breaks of emotion–frowns sliding alongside smiles–it’s impossible to know which step will be the most stable one. But you have to keep pressing on, through the flames that will continue to lick at your charred heels.
Endings.
They’re simply beginnings in disguise.
Throughout high school, it seems like it’s a system built upon preparing for the future. You know, “next year you’ll be expected to do…” or “in college,” “junior year,” “in the real world.” High school is just this fake world meant to assimilate us into the actual world. And sometimes that seems ludicrous…yet, the more I look at it, the more true it becomes. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We limit ourselves in high school. “Oh, I still have more years to do that,” or “I could always join that next year,” or “I’ll only do this or join that if my friend is too.” We make it become the game it’s set up to be. But, guess what? Just because high school is occurring doesn’t mean it’s a simple pass at a Monopoly game at family game night. No. The “real world” doesn’t stop just because you’re in school. It’s still twisting and sweeping through our bones and souls. And half the time we barely notice it–our eyes covered in textbooks, rehearsed ideas, sports, clubs, “pretend” life. So we’ll skip out on going to watch sunsets, miss nights we could have spent with friends or wrapped up with books or tv. We pass off family dinners for study dates with worn textbooks and bright screens at dark 2 a.m. hours.
I’m not trying to say that high school is completely fake. I’m just saying that, yes, be involved, care about school and your future but don’t make planning become your life. The present is here and can’t idle for long. The future’s stations away, along with the past. And it’s usually easier to pinpoint where we’re going and the place we came than it is to recognize what or who we are once we’re continually riding through new forests every minute.
Along with the idea of not devoting your life to planning plays in how even though endings occur–usually in shattering and black occasions–it doesn’t terminate everything. Yes, school years will come to a close. And there will be tears as friends begin to switch and fall out, as lovers flow in and out, as you realize who you are and aren’t, as you see the light leave people’s eyes and flow into others. Endings will occur. I can promise you that.
When things end, they change. It’s inevitable. And in that change, people will expose their rawest edge (whether they know it or not). Once you know the school year is ending or if you’re like me and this is your last year in high school, your heart rages and blinks with the emotions colliding in your brain and heart. Therefore, everyone can truly see who is who and it’s quite sobering. People fall into themselves and it’s such a scary yet beautiful process to witness.
There are no limitations in endings.
Freedom exists throughout them. So that’s why I always have to see them as restarts. Of course, for some, it takes longer to get back to the point where I want to recognize the growth that could result from the different fissures a certain ending causes. But it always happens at some point.
The only way to benefit from endings is to take advantage of them, to reap in as many benefits as you can because you can either dare yourself to go out on the line because, well, it’s going to end soon anyway so why not try? Or you can let yourself hide under the possible shards that could launch into your brittle veins and rip them into new scars you have to carry along.
But because endings happen I can guarantee that beginnings will blossom along with your shivering, breaking heart. Friends will leave your side, by choice or not, and that friendship will end. But the memories won’t. People can leave this earth in the matter of a few scratched seconds but that shouldn’t ever make you shy away from making connections. Because you will grow and accept the pain that death so easily paints across delicate, wounded skin. You’ll find yourself. Whether it be because you’re moving onto a new chapter of life to simply moving onto the next sentence, words and punctuation will always be ending. Yet new phrases will always be shifting into your heart, with new laughter, new smiles, new words, new support, and new tears.
Yes, change is scary, in whatever variety it happens in. But, in my opinion, part of growing up is realizing (and accepting) that certain parts of your life will end. And even though you know things will end, you don’t let it stop you from running, chasing, pursuing. Instead, you let it be your frozen, silver star shaking in the blackness of every Midnight, of every scratch your heart catches itself in. I promise you, if you let it bring you out of your shyness, out of your pain, out of your bruised heart, that you can’t do anything wrong. Because you’ll be trying. And that‘s when things are able to blossom–once they dare to slip out into the beginning orange and pink rays of a sunrise, waiting to smile at you if you smile first.
