“This is our night” my best friend chants.

Whether we are on our way to a sporting event, dance, or even just driving by the beach to pass time, she always makes it clear that tonight is our night and anything is possible. Pressing the idea that we can do whatever our hearts crave and go wherever our minds take us.

As she chants that phrase, I think how fast time has gone by. How we used to talk about the future as if it was this distant thought that would never approach us, but now the future has seemed to become the present. It’s finally catching up to us.

Friends are committing to colleges, connecting with roommates for next year, ordering our cap and gown…it’s all starting to become so real, we’re graduating. Every month and event has become more and more sentimental, the fact that it is our last time.

Football season has passed, the last time standing at the fence surrounded by the greatest friends in the world screaming at the top of your lungs cheering on the Bucs. Our last dances, sport seasons, spending every weekend trying to fulfill time lost, and making the best moments we have left. The thought of making new friends next year and being away from everyone is the scariest feeling in the world, but like all good things, it must come to an end and for the best reasons. Turning 18 and becoming an adult, the craving of a new place and experience is in full action. You just know it’s time to move on and with how much I love high school and these last four years, I would never redo them.

While the list of things I will not miss about high school is short, the aspects I will miss is endless. To start off, I’ll miss those teachers you can have the most in-depth conversations with and make you feel more grown up than any other adult around. I’ll miss the Friday pep rallies filled with adrenaline of being enclosed in a gym with all your classmates chanting the school song, and competing with every grade at which can be the loudest. It’s sad to say goodbye to that sport you love playing and being apart of a team where it feels like your siblings. I’ll miss seeing my friends every day, between class discussing the weekend ahead or the great memories you made the previous one.

As the last month of high school came closing in I looked around at my friend group and see old friends, the ones I have grown with for the past four years, and new ones that I just had the chance of getting to know this year. These people feel like my family and parting ways with them is just about the hardest thing I can think of. In not too long all these friends will be on their journey to a new place with new people. High school has felt like my whole life, and I know in time these four years will just be a distant memory far in the past, so to my fellow seniors, this has been our night and for now it is over, but in our hearts it is forever.