For Better or for Worse

It's nearing time again. Yeah, there are still five or six weeks left, but it still seems like everything is drawing to a close. The sun is bright and hot, burning up these last few weeks quickly in what will be a barrage of projects and tests as our teachers try to cram in fifty more grades in before the quarter ends. And through it all, we'll have five million more important tests, like the AP exams this week, and the state exams (one of which I get to take twice). And finally, we'll have finals, and that last day... The most bittersweet day of the year, because when you're not trying to pull formulas and words and crap from the deepest crevices of your brain, you're remembering that nothing will ever be the same.
Because even though you'll see most of these people in a few months, they'll have changed, and you'll have changed. Things that could have happened when we were all how we are will never happen, and we'll continue through life, discarding the possibilities of who we are in favor of the possibilities of who we might be.
I know far better than some that change happens, for the better or for the worse, and usually I can accept it, embrace it, even. But the last day of school has always been the hardest change for me to take.
It makes no sense, because I've never seen the world through rose-colored glasses- I'm the cynical outsider who always unintentionally sees flaws. But somehow, on that last day, I look back on the past year, and all I remember is the fun I had, the people I got to know- and somehow I forget the times I wished wildly for the place to burn down, because the people in it were so crappy.
Perhaps it's the depressing music to which I'm currently listening, or the fear of boredom, but thinking of the coming summer grips my heart and squeezes, allowing the lesser stages of a panic attack enter.
How is it that every summer I forget how, last winter, I always longed for summer? For a time with no school projects, no overwrought schedules, no bone-deep cold driving me from the sun? How do I always forget past summers, and the friendships forged, and the new experiences which came my way? How can I forget the fun, and the warmth, and the pure exhilaration of being alive?
It's getting close to that time of the year when all I remember are the friends I've lost as the calendar flipped from June into July, when my soul yearns for days of laziness in the form of teacher-aided skipping, talking non-stop as my friends and I pack books or make paper clip chains in the library. When I remember our plans to stay in touch, and how they all fell through. Or even if we do still talk or see each other, however rarely, it's as people who barely know each other. Yet I can see, either in their matured faces or between the words of their brief emails, what used to be. But that's all gone now, because we've grown up some since then.
Yes, I know change is good. Change is necessary, and mostly I thrive on the though of it, because it means things can get better. But when I remember my missing friends as they were and compare them to the strangers of today, all I want to do is return to then, no matter how much then sucked in other ways, and freeze it, and live in it forever.
Maybe I'm justing getting emotional and girly- I'm allowed to do that occasionally, even though not everyone might think of me as a girl- but every word is truth. As I said, maybe it's really just the depressing music, but maybe it's just how things have to play out. For better or for worse.

Thought for the day: They say the best leader is someone who doesn't want to lead, which kind of makes elections a crappy way of getting a leader.

Signed,
Two of Wands