(warning - bit of a blubby dad moment)today I am immensely proud of my daughter (my youngest child) who finished school today, and reflected on what it has meant to her...
Bish's awesome daughter wrote:
As I walked down the road home for the final time (apart from my exam days but I'm choosing to ignore them for now) the people behind me were shouting, screaming and whooping about finally going off time table. When they all turned off to go to the park, everything suddenly turned quieter, lonelier, all together more melancholy. It finally began to sink in that this was it. Five years of amazing friendships, laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, pain and jubilation, it is all coming to a close. I wouldn't want to do it all again, I want to continue my life but a part of me is scared by moving out into the unknown while part of me is incredibly excited.
At the end of school, me and my friends would wait for each other over by the side every day. Today it stood empty. I realised that others, people who never knew me, people who may not even be alive yet, might wait in that same place and not know or care that I was ever there. It struck me how strange it is that a place that was yours for so many years can belong to others without you even knowing. The place where we would sit for lunch in the hall, the spot on the field we would claim in the sunshine, every single classroom I have been in, places that have made up such a big part of my life so far, I have had very little impact on them. My part in their history will be small.
I understand that many try to escape for their own insignificance to the universe, and usually I do to. But today I think I can feel a part of how small my effect on the world is right now, and it makes me both sad and amazed. Every single organism has its own life. Every single object has been made by someone else. I don't know where the chair I am sitting in came from, I don't know who made it, I don't know who sat on this in the past- I can only know my past and who I am. I can only know my friends and my things and I can only live my life.
There are many things I will miss, not just about leaving school but leaving my home too, and I know there will be things in the future that will give me joy just as going to Gaynes and meeting wonderful people. I will miss being there. I will miss living here. I will miss the people here that I love. Maybe in time I will even miss this feeling, joy and sadness rolled into one, making a strange feeling of compression in my chest.
I wish everyone else who has now left the best of luck and I hope you get everything you deserve.
{sniff}