Looking back, I think I can recollect the fragmented memories of my first day at middle school. It felt like a new world, strange and different. I entered through the school doors with a book in my hand, halfway read. Nervously looking about the people around me, I saw both familiar and new faces. I would have to admit, there were times when my heart sank when I discovered that some of my closest friends weren’t there. Though, it wasn’t until everyone was almost completely gone that I finally realized from my thoughtless “staring into space,” that my name wasn’t called up when they were assigning students their classes and teachers to follow.

Somehow I managed to wind up at the room of the class that I was suppose to be with earlier. It occurred to me back then, that I was late at the time and even when everyone knew that I was, of course, late, the teacher just shrugged it off by saying that I was not and that it was fine. It gnaws on me to think that I didn’t make a very good first impression. I wasn’t thinking when I sat down on an empty seat at a table. Unconsciously, I copied down my new class’ schedule of academics from the board, listing in my head how many things have and could have gone wrong, and as usual – I avoided any eyes.

The day seemed like a blur. Before I realized it I became accustomed to having to move from class to class, teacher to teacher, from period to period without all the frenzy and crazed pushing in the halls, and even meeting a few friends. Days went by, weeks, months, and then school years seemed to have just flown by. Now it’s just days away until we’re walking down the aisle at our graduation ceremony. It feels like I’m leaving behind a part of myself and moving on without it.

I know that I’ll feel that sensation again - leaving and not coming back, going to a new school and having to start over, meeting old friends and strangely just “not know them anymore.” The thought terrifies me to think that life’s like this too, that things would come and go in a glance, and that there’s nothing you can do to stop time even when you wish against the whole world that it would stop. Though, know that the difference are the memories of sadness, frustration, laughter, smiles and the distant waves of “byes” and “hellos” cannot be erased. They are engraved forever in memory and time. Though yet again, even when I keep telling myself this, the truth lies when we will all be here at this school on the last day of our childish years where we will have to say the final goodbye and walk away just like the normal school days. It’s just that this time, I’ll hope, I want, to walk home (if I could) with some of those bittersweet memories of yesterdays.