We Were Infinite.

In the beginning, I only remember wanting to graduate. May was too far away, and the sights and sounds of this place too confining. Hearing gossip in the halls made me cringe, and seeing the latest high school romances unfold, only to end in tears, made me wish for a new day. For a while, I imagined the walls of my school closing in on me, day by day. I wasn’t happy here.
The days stopped running together and the walls stopped closing in when I took a look at the faces surround me. There was pain, anger, resentment. There was love, happiness, joy. The faces became real to me, and the people behind them as well. The more time I took to look around me, the more I realized that I had never seen these kids before, and the more I wanted to see them, to know them. Each face became a person, and each person became a story.
The sounds of gossip and silly high school drama began to fade out as the year progressed. More and more, I began to hear the stories of those who I’d be leaving behind. These stories that explained the pain that I saw in their eyes and these stories revealed unseen scars to my listening ears. And along with the pain they allowed me to know, I was able to share in the laughter and love that these kids were experiencing. I noticed that there was a respect in their voices. There was something that taught me that, though I was leaving, they wouldn’t forget me.
When the end of our seventh semester came around, my classmates and I were falling into a routine. We were learning to love and to be there for those younger than us, and for those that had been with us for the last thirteen years. We felt our hearts growing closer and closer as we shared things that cannot be reproduced. Bursts of laughter at the latest inside joke became a staple for our every day spent together. We shared something deep inside that would be there forever. That feeling, that common ground, brought us past our differences. It meant more than the fact that some of us were wearing wranglers, while others donned designer clothes, and still others went for hand-me-downs.
This connection will define us, because it is something every teen longs to learn. We think ourselves invincible at times, but we know that is impossible. It’s when we learn that the words we speak and the love we share will stay with those around us forever, that we are finally complete. All we want is to be infinite, to last, to never die. On the first day of this school year, I realized that these kids I’d known forever would discover the secret of life right alongside me. I realized that our senior year would show us just how much of an impact we’d made. We were going to be remembered. We were infinite.