Friday, September 28, 2007

Growing Up

This post is long overdue but I've been so insanely busy lately and my computer is absolutely begging me to throw it out with the amount of times it has screwed up in the past month. Once again, it's September, the days are growing shorter, the weather growing colder, and once again, it's back to school season.
For many years now, going back to school has always given me pretty much the exact same feelings every year: excitement, a little sadness for the official ending of the familiar routines of the previous years, and maybe comparing my height to people I haven't seen for the whole summer in hopes that I have grown a micrometer or two. This year, however, the feeling was a little different. It was as if the idea of "growing up" had finally hit me. I mean, its not as if I've been oblivious to moving through the grades or growing taller over the years, but maybe deep inside, all along, there's a part of me that can't quite grasp the concept of one day being "grown up" and being an adult. Maybe it has something to do with sleeping in the same bedroom since I was six years old. I mean, its not that I think the same way or (thankfully) look the same way I did back when I was six, but whenever I'm asked the classic question of what I want to be when I'm finished with school, it still feels like I'm thinking about what I want to be when I "grow up".
This year, when I walked in the school, I saw that "popular" girls in my grade have given up on the sluttyishly tight TNA clothing and have gone on to wearing clothes that actually look good. Almost everyone worked over the summer and alot of people are still working part-time throughout the school year. I see people from my school working at grocery stores, clothing stores, and fast-food restaurants. I feel like people around me have all blended into the world and I'm still sort of stuck halfway between childhood and the real world.
As I am now a senior high school student, I am leading ten grade eights so they have someone to "look up to" and the school plans activities for them to help them adjust to high school. When I see them, I feel so old. It doesn't seem that long ago when I looked lost in the hallways and everybody not in my grade was a "big kid". I see them facing the same problems that I faced like losing touch with elementary school friends and I suddenly feel so old. Suddenly, I know all the people who are in Cafeteria Class that prepare my lunch who are all senior high school students. Suddenly, my friends are the ones in Vocal Jazz and not some older students that I don't know. Suddenly, I'm lugging around a huge Biology textbook and I realize that high school really doesn't last forever and I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.