Truly Seizing the Now:

For as long as I could remember adults all around me would tell me “don’t grow up”,“getting old sucks” and my personal favorite, “what I would give to be your age again.” The only things on my mind at this point were A. who am I going to invite to “lunch with the teacher” on Friday and B. How am I going to break it to my mom that there is a spelling test tomorrow and I haven’t studied. 

While they weren’t wrong in telling me “not to grow up”, I would get annoyed pretty fast. Adults never understood the middle school struggles of only being allowed to work with one partner when you have two best friends in the class that will definitely choose each other over you. Adults never seemed to understand the absolute devastation of losing a 100 day snapchat streak, or even worse, when someone removed you as a friend on Houseparty.

Okay Sam we get it, you still have some issues to iron out from your middle school days, what’s your point? The point I’m getting at is, high school is nothing more than a relative episode of some cheesy disney show. Maybe you’re struggling in your 10th grade math class, or maybe you’re doing so well people keep asking for your work. Whatever is going on that feels like the end of the world, I promise it’s not. 

When we’re all grown and sitting by a fire with our grandkids, telling stories from our youth, we won’t remember these tragedies of that boy ghosting you or your best friend removing you from her private story. We’re going to remember all those times where we were laughing so hard SPRITE came out our noses and those times we were singing Queen songs at the tops of our lungs. Those are the moments highschool is all about. 

 Currently there are only two things on my mind. 1; the fact that I am unbelievably excited to be going to college in less than a year. And 2; the fact that I am absolutely terrified of college, that is less than a year away.

I feel the reason I am having such conflicting thoughts is because; everything for me, right now *as i’m writing this* is perfect. For example: I just had probably the best day I’ve had in a long long time. I spent the afternoon with my 3 closest friends, laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. I have a job that dare I say, I enjoy? I don’t dread going to work anymore and I even hang out with my coworkers outside of work. What kind of sick person would say that?

With that being said: my biggest goal right now is to live in the moment. Like this is my last Christmas as a child?… woah, I can’t believe I just typed that? But on a real note, this is all we have left, we have to live in the “now” while we have it. 

Truly, 

Samantha Smith