Goodbye to 2009. It was a crazy year, but a good one.
I read a plethora of great books. I discovered sonnets. I was the most depressed I’ve ever been, and I got out of the depression. I made a lot of progress on my screenplay. I wrote a whole different screenplay. I had my first kiss (albeit onstage, but still). I became proficient at video games. I went to Hawaii. I cultivated a relationship with a new best friend, and rebuilt bridges with a former one. I did a lot of things that I wished I had done in childhood; undid regrets about my character that I thought it was too late to undo. I saw Green Day live in concert. I directed the one-act I’d written, causing the two most stressful and most rewarding months of my life. I took up songwriting. I learned about humility. I was in two movies. I went to Homecoming. I learned Spanish. I applied to college. I watched all my friends graduate and realized I was left here alone with a year to wait before it would be my turn.
And hello to 2010.
Hello to the year when I will graduate from high school. The year when I will embark on my senior trip, a month spent traveling from Paris to Cairo without parents. Hello to a year whose second half is a vast, hazy mystery, and will continue to be until April, when I know what colleges I got into. Welcome to the year when I will turn 18 and become an adult, the year when I move away from home, a year full of new experiences and new identities. What experiences? What identities? I don’t know, and to speculate is exhilarating and terrifying.
Time really is an incredible thing, the way it passes through our fingertips and is gone forever. Here’s to 2010: may it be a year of great adventures and no regrets. We’ll only get the chance to live it once.
the whole benchilada 