I kept thinking I would post, and here I've let almost a month go by with no word from me...
It's been crazy hectic this last month, with AP Exams, finals, major projects in every class, graduation parties, and mission trip preparation.
Where to begin??? Today is June 8, and that means it's graduation. Yes, today is the day I've waited 13 years for-- I'll walk across a stage, get a diploma, flip my tassle and say goodbye to all the friends I've made for four years or more. I can't believe it's the "end." I can't believe it's the "beginning" either. I'd love to say I feel nothing but sheer happiness and excitement. But that's a lie. I'm really sad, afraid, anxious, happy, excited, and frustrated all at the same time. And I can't necessarily put a cause/rhyme/reason for every one of those emotions, but I can say that that's how I feel and that's how I've been feeling for about a month now. It's hard to imagine leaving all your friends, family, school, everything you've known all your life to go start your own adventure somewhere else. But everyone does it, so I have assured myself that I am not the first, nor will I be the last person to ever feel like this.
I am afraid of one thing today: and that's crying. I do not want to cry at graduation because I don't think I would be able to stop. Once you get me crying about one thing, I will probably cry about more things...oh well. I'm turning in to quite the woman, I suppose.

Senior picnic was yesterday and I had a blast. We signed yearbooks, ate some yummy food, played a TON of volleyball, ran around, talked and just basically enjoyed each other's company. I realize that as much as I have grown tired of most of the kids in my class and at my school, I will always treasure whatever relationships and memories I have shared with them.

The last day of school was utterly heartbreaking and joyous all at once. We got those moon-bounce things that you can jump on and that was AWESOME. But realizing that the relationships I've had with these teachers won't exist in teh same way in college broke my heart. I have grown really close to so many of them, and the fact that I could come to them and they would talk to me like an adult really changed the way I saw myself and adults. I realized through them that I've grown so much these last four years and I've become a completely different person. There's a song by Sara Groves that I like to call my graduation song. Here's a snipet of it:

I don't want to leave here
Don't want to stay
It feels like pinching to me,
Either way.
But the places I long for
the most are the places where I've been
They are calling out to me,
Like a long, lost friend
...And the place I was wasn't perfect,
But I had found a way to live
And it wasn't milk or honey,
But then neither is this.
...the future feels so hard
and I want to go back,
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I've learned
And those roads were closed off to me
While my back was turned
The past is so tangible,
I know it by heart,
Familiar things are never easy
To discard
I was dying for some freedom,
But now I hesitate to go,
I am caught between the promised
And the things I know.

I guess I'll just leave it at that.