It is exactly 64 days until graduation.
Graduation means many things to me. It's a word full of cold bright days and warm, rainy ones. It reminds me of my dreams that I've been pursuing for the past 4 years. Yet, there's 64 days left, and I'm still stuck in the same place I was 4 years ago. I'm still that same, innocent, pure freshman entering high school. Yet, so much has changed that I'm not sure if I am really still that same person.
64 days and counting, and I still can't count how many times I've thought of you in this past year. If it's 365, well, I wouldn't believe it. Because I thought I got over those times. I thought I could get over you. But, 64 days left until I graduate—until I walk the path you walked last year—and I still couldn't move from where time stopped last summer.
"We can still be friends," you told me. "I'll still text you, and we'll meet up when I'm on break."
"Okay," I said, as you hugged me for the last time.
I should have known then that a simple conversation like that would lead to months of no contact. Even now, we're still not speaking. As I watched you walk out of that door of whatever cheap restaurant we decided to eat at, I should have known that walking out of that same door is a hard step to take.
I don't know what you would think of me now, about to take that same step out the door, though a different door entirely, leading me to a new side of the world where I wouldn't have my parents behind my back and my friends beside me. Were you scared, going into a city where the only person you knew was your roommate and everyone else was loud and big and just so caught up in their own worlds? If we were still friends now, what would you tell me?
"I don't like to commit to the other person more than they commit to me," you once said.
"Me neither," I replied.
"Maybe we'll drift apart so much because of that and we won't be friends anymore in the future."
"There's no way. We'll always be friends. Always."
Little did I know that you won't be here to guide my journey into adulthood.
Despite the pain of your leaving, though, I think I've learned something that I didn't before: sometimes, we gotta pretend that we have it good even if we don't. After you left, I learned to enjoy living without being caught up in whatever you were doing. I learned to live for myself before living for others. I think that's what you would tell me, because, walking into a big and loud and angry city, you have to learn to put yourself first and not others.
That's why, if I were to see you on the streets someday, or if I were to suddenly run into you in a couple months, I would smile and say, "Long time no see."
Because sometimes, that phrase can go a long way forward. And, other times, it can take us all back to the beginning.