They say you were something in those formative years.

Tonight, Joseph and I went to IB's graduation. What's weirder to me than going to my alma mater's graduation is the fact that these 'kids' I remember being small and being the new kids at band camp are going to college. They're in the same position we were in at the end of last year. It's weird seeing them grow up. Charlotte Kent? Couldn't stand her. I thought she had so much know-it-all in her that she couldn't get any more matter-of-fact. Now, I absolutely love her and think she's hilarious and we have so much in common - nine letters in our names, our favorite Disney princess is Belle, brown hair, tall, deeper voice than most girls, dated/are dating Joseph, play the flute/piccolo, et cetera. Same with Michelle - I couldn't stand her, and now she's a great friend. We all talk about this from time to time, too. "Remember my freshman year when we hated each other?"

I seem to measure my life in events, not ages; rather, I measure my life in ages by the events that occurred then, and not just "I remember being sixteen..." No. I remember I was fourteen when I realized I love(d, in the romantic sense at this time) my best friend Tommy. I was fifteen when I got my first kiss, when I was first chair of the concert band and got to play piccolo and a suite from Bizet's Carmen. I had a kickass solo. I was sixteen when I got a car, when I got into symphonic band - fourth chair out of 20 flutes in total, when my aunt died, and when Joseph and I began dating and went to IB prom, the best one out of the three we attended. I was seventeen when I saw Josh Groban in concert with Joseph on our one-year anniversary, when I met his grandfather and aunt for the first time (and I think Rebecca - I can't think of any other time I would have met her before then, but I could be mistaken), when I found out my dad had cancer and was given an estimate of 6 months to live, when I graduated and my dad was able to see me walk across the stage and get my diploma, when I got my first job with Starbucks Coffee. I was eighteen when I started college and had a shitty roommate then a good one, when my dad died, when my grandmother died, and when I celebrated my two-year anniversary with Joseph; I also finished my first year of college with a 3.38 cumulative GPA (although it should have been higher - my fault, though, so I can't say much...), Dean's List first semester, stayed in the Honors program, got my second job at the Children's Place at HUMC, and finally felt like a significant part of Joseph's family.

It feels like it's been five years since Joseph and I graduated. Life changes so rapidly, and going off to college was such a big deal; it didn't feel it when we started or went, I suppose just because we were going through it, but it definitely feels like it now as I look back on all the things that have happened since I started high school.

Here's to you, graduates of 2008. May your lives be as chaotic as ours are for your first semester of college so you can learn how to live. Take advantage of life while it's here.

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."
-T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)