on graduating

This is my chosen theme tune for my graduation. Hopeful, wistful. Beautiful. 

I graduate tomorrow.


I can't believe how fast those three years passed, and how much I managed to grow in that crackle of time.

So allow me a few moments of nostalgia. 



The past few months have been all worrying over exams and summer jobs and everything that comes after graduation, after our lives are blown apart. After the end of mapped-out, planned-ahead life.

The past few days have been tears and rehearsals and disbelief. Cleaning and cooking and receiving far too many cards and flowers.

But the past few years. Three to be exact. They have smashed me into pieces and helped me build myself up again.

I have become a better writer, I think. A better student, maybe. A better friend, certainly.




These are the things I will miss.

My teachers.
The classrooms and the corridors, the stages and the stairs.
The performances. The endless enthusiasm, the constant outpouring of ideas.
The buzz beneath the mundane, the excitement of being a part of something.

That sense of belonging.
 
The streets of Kallio: the drunks and the hipsters, the cafés and the dodgy bars, the flowers and the vomit stains, the erotica shops and the beautiful library. The trams and the seagulls.

And, finally. My friends.
Because the friends I have found in and around Kallio, the people we've gathered into our mutual orbit, these are the people I don't want to let go of. This is the most difficult, terrifying thing about graduating. This fear of loss.

(But I think my fear is mostly unfounded. A bit premature. We have all summer, after all. These three glorious months.)



Before I start crying: I think these are the years I might miss later on.

When I was little, my mother said about missing things and people: It's how you know you care. It's how you know you had a good time. It's a sign of love.