ten years ago tonight i graduated from high school. although i knew this day was coming soon because i was contacted about three months ago for a reunion, i didn't realize it was upon me until today. early this afternoon i was at work(yeah, i work now) and i was entering in a stack of files into our system and for each one i had to type in the date. after i had written the date about three times i realized it was ten years to the date of the day my life as a person, not just a high school student, started. i mentioned this to my co-worker and she just laughed and told me if i thought ten years was weird, to wait until it was twenty. i couldn't help but think about how fast time goes. i have often thought about the way we define ourselves and today i started contemplating how the definitions and labels we give ourselves while we are young, basically still children can completely shape who we become. i started a new job this week and i am lucky enough to get to work with my husband. one of the women training me laughed and said that she always thinks about the first day of a new job like the first day of school and told me i was lucky because at least i knew someone, i already had a friend. i started thinking about that today. i know i am a very different person from the one that i was in high school. i have had many experiences that have made me examine what i am made of and what my beliefs and priorities are and that have just plain stretched me, and put me in a place of discovering not only who i am but what i have the potential to become. i never could have imagined the adventures(the good, the bad and the scary) that i have had in the last ten years, but in many ways i am the same. i still love to make people laugh...i still like to have many friends with a variety of different interests and personalities because i have so many different interests myself and i enjoy experiencing new things with other people...i still love reading, writing, singing and acting... i still love meeting new people, even though i don't know if i am as outgoing as i once was, i think that some of my travels have taught me to be cautious and not let myself be vulnerable, sometimes causing me to miss out on possible friendships, i guess i have to work on that one....i still love to learn and that is great because as long as i am living i will be learning. even though i am no longer in school, i get to be a student for life...
4 comments:
10 yeats goes fast doesn't it? Now that you mention it, I also graduated one June 4th, but for me it was 14 years ago. That is seriously hard to swallow. So much has changed for me too, and in some ways I don't even recognize that girl who walked down in her cap and gown to be given her diploma. Time will just continue to soar, but with each year it gets better in many ways. I can honestly say, I would never want to go back to being 18 again.
It must be in the air, because a few nights ago, on our way home we past a high school and I had a little pang in my stomach. I sometimes miss it--the realtive carefree anture of it all, ya know? It was fun, but life moves on, and there is no sense living in the past. Good post.
Loved your post Julie. When I went to my 30th year reunion, I decided it would be my last. Everybody looked so different it was hard to recognize them, but without my glasses I couldn't read their name tags! It is poignant for me to think of your graduating from high school so long ago and all that has transpired. I value every day, wouldn't want to go back a day for all I've learned, but, like Rachel, I do feel the poignance. I miss living with you all and hearing your laughter--though I wouldn't want you not to have all that an entire lifetime holds. I guess you just have to cherish each moment as it comes.
beanie - i hear you...i was thinking about how our theme was "cherish yesterday, live today, dream tomorrow" and how we really need to cherish every day, the past because it has made us who we are, the present because we get to choose what we make of it and the future because it gives us hope for things to come. it is crazy because today i had four messages in my email inbox from our senior class secretary and one was an evite to our reunion in August.
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