Finality

The end of the school year always sneaks up on me, like Christmas or my mom's birthday always do.  (cough, mom's birthday, Thursday, can't forget.) Thinking about being almost done with hallway drama, early wakeups, tests and essays and homework and stress, and looking ahead to the rest and happy activity of summer is a welcome thought.  A sigh of relief.  I can almost smell summer - the flowers and fresh fruit and outdoors that we don't get to explore much since most days have seven hours spent in a brick building. I guess I can't literally smell it since my nose has been hopelessly plugged for the past couple days, but I can imagine in my brain what it has smelled like in the past,.  Hopefully I'll be able to smell again soon.

The end of the year stressors are nearly behind me.  Finals are in the process, I just completed my final paper for my AP lit and comp class, and PSEO was done long ago.  

There are the little things though, like cleaning out my locker and taking home my entire shelf of art supplies and projects that will take some careful planning and sort of get my stomach in a knot when I think about lugging it all home.  

Not that it matters, I'm almost a Senior, nearly done with my penultimate year of high school.  

I'm about to enter another phase of my life, a phase that requires decisions and action that will change the course of the rest of my days.  Talk about stressors.  

For now, I just breathe deeply, feeling the tightness in my chest and fighting back the urge to cough, and think that I will take things one day at a time.