I'm at that point after the debate season where
I'm all exhausted and nostalgic because
it's too late to do anything this season
too early to worry about next season and
all my senior friends graduated and
I'll never see them again.

Even scarier is the revelation that this will be me next year.  

What started out as a pleasant diversion
something to do on weekends
has become my social life and my education, and,
to a larger extent than it should be,
my identity.

I will miss playing truth-or-truth
(like truth or dare, only with more difficult decisions).
I will miss making friends because
I can't walk in heels
or mispronounced a word
or I like someone's tie.
I will miss our stupid inside jokes and debating
(and beating)
cute boys, waking up in a new city every weekend.
I will miss long car rides staring at the moonlight
illuminating the patterned clouds,
my headphones in and my best friends sleeping
packed closer-than-comfortable on each other's shoulders.
I know I have another year left, but
a lot of people who made debate what it is
have either graduated or will be graduating this year.

I miss my friends, my mentors, already.
As they leave, the threads that tie me to my city
fray. Already,
a year before it will finally be my turn
to face that door that leads into the unknown of
adult life, the door through which
many of my closest friends have already walked,
I have utterly lost any reluctance
to pass through it.
One friend after another has left
this tiny valley I call home,
and most of my best friends live outside of it.

One more year.

I now understand the way the seniors I looked up to
didn't seem to notice me
or pay me the sort of attention I paid them
when I was busy idealizing and looking up to them --
it's not that I don't care
about the younger kids on my team or my school,
or that I don't appreciate or believe in them,
but they are not a part of my future.
They are not a part of what I will become.  

I face that mysterious door, fighting my way
step by step
through mounds of paperwork and college applications
all for that intangible future
more fresh and beautiful than anything here.
I will go.

And those cute little incoming freshmen will not follow.
If I am to face forward, I must necessarily fix my eyes
on my future, not theirs.
They will do the same in time.

I can't bring myself to obsess over the past
and beat myself up over the relationships
(debationships?)
I should have developed but didn't.
There's no point. I don't mean to sound nihilistic --
in fact, just the opposite.
My future is manifesting itself slowly,
inexorably and inexplicably before me.

Am I making decisions, or is fate
shaping my loves and hates and opportunities?
I don't think it matters.
I choose to gaze at my future as infinite opportunity,
infinite joy spread over infinite possiblities.
As that joy becomes tangible, it also becomes more finite,
but from where I stand I see everything ahead.
I can finally leave everything I have been tied to
and prove to myself I am myself.

To those who are graduating this year:
even if I barely remember you,
if you were a brief conversation
or a random my-friend-dared-me-to-hug-you,
you are awesome.
Our brief, random, enlightening moments
of shared human contact have made me who I am.
I can't explain how much it means to realize
that you're not alone,
that some people care about the same things you do
and care enough to reach out and teach.

To those of you who have time left:
make the most of it.
Talk to the shy kid in the corner;
She's the sweetest.
Talk to the kid who reads Game of Thrones between rounds;
He has the funniest stories.
If you have a cute opponent, ask for their case
and write your number on it.
You only get one shot at this,
and it goes by too fast for you to hold back.
My best memories have come from the most dangerous
and strange decisions --
walking around a dark campus
with a couple of people I barely know,
picking "dare" in truth or dare,
smiling at strangers.

To those of you in the same class as me,
looking forward, bound to your past and present:
thank you.
Thank you
thank you
for existing and being kind to me and regaling me with your stories and emotional problems and memories.
Thank you for not letting me stay depressed
and dragging me outside of myself.
Thank you for making me care, one way or another.
When I stand at my high school graduation
in my school's garish purple and gold,
I will be thinking of a dozen other people
in blue and red and orange and green.
I will be thinking of the people
who made life too precious to spill out on a knife,
too beautiful to be captured in the pages of a book,
too unanticipated to get bored or cynical of.