my plane leaves at 7 tonight and i have no idea what my life is gonna be like when i step off it at 9 in the morning tomorrow. that's such a crazy feeling. to be picked up by a man and a daughter i don't know and taken to a house i don't know to do a job that i don't know. ah! quelle aventure.

i posted my addresses on facebook. Write to me and I'll write back and it'll be old school and awesome.

I'll be back August 12th. Then college. Man oh man, life is moving.

i'm really numb. i thought i'd be bawling in school, talking through tears and messing up yearbooks with them, laugh crying, cry laughing, and i'm not. i videotaped walking out of stuy and said "The end." That's about as sentimental as today got. And i hate that. I want to realize the gravity of what just happened and not be sad later today or this week or this summer or in 20 years and be like shit, i should have done something, said something, to tell the people i've gone to school with for the past four years how much they've meant to me and how amazing they all are, but i can't do that because it doesn't feel real. I think i still think i'll see them in September. I can't believe i'm leaving for France in less than two weeks and that when i get back, people will have 5, maybe 10 more days in the city. Jeesh.

I think it's partially because i'm just avoiding anything that'll make me sad. I coudln't say bye to the theater. At work, i couldn't hand in my apron. I can't think that this xanga will end now that high school's over.

Or maybe it really just is because i'm ready.  Meh, i don't know.

i remember reading becky dinerstein's day before last day of high school entry last year, talking about how she doesn't even understand what it means. i've started, recently, to know. it means that rubbing my nose in front of kenny after a test is over. it means that rushing for the best locker the first day of school is through. it means that i'm done with papers for la bonne, done with projects for great books, done with tests for calc and bio (oh wait, scratch that, stuy, in true spirit, has given me two lovely tests on thursday). It means that awesome spontaneous fridays that wind up in hopefully lifelong friendships are fond memories and running through battery park after school was  a good time. It means that the words Fiddler on the Roof don't make me reach immediately for a songbook to start practicing for an audition. No more terry's, morgan's or gourmet dilemmas. No more warning bells. No more Mr. Farbstein cynical and insightful lectures. No more 4-2 escalator rides or afternoon bio sessions or cheer camps or SINGs. No more hearing Ms. McCaffrey yell, come on girls!!!, seeing Mr. Connolley and the payroll secretary under the scaffolding, no more treks up the bridge, up the broken escalators. It means that walking along Broadway to destress after school was a thing i used to do. It means that I, for the first time in 13 years, am not going to school with my best friend.

the part that i can't understand is not what i'm leaving behind that i know, but what i'm leaving behind that i don't know. at prom, surrounded by people all slow dancing just like me for the last few songs, i realized these people were with me for four years and i knew, maybe, half of them? do i concede that it's over, that half of them will remain faces in my yearbook? how can i accept that when i've met people like jonah simpson in the last two months, when i had my first real talk with matt nestor on sunday, when there's still SO MUCH to be explored? how could i possibly think that i was bored of stuyvesant when it still, secretly had so much to offer?

and yet, simulatenously, i'm so ready to leave it. I'm glad i can leave knowing that there was no better place for me (except Andover? Exeter? ahh another life...), and even if there was, i'm happy knowing that i couldn't picture it any other way. I'm glad it's allowed me to grow into myself and step out of the shadows of middle school. I'm thankful it's allowed me to become more comfortable with myself. And whenever i hear something like john's memoir (the law of conservation of energy as applied to death), or listen to jazz on the way to the hamptons after prom, or dance with my bio class during the cat dissection to calypso music, or laugh with emily about how we love the same part of gizem's poem where the sugar crystals melt and ooze from her fingers, i can't help but think man, i love stuy. who are all these people? they're amazing. but i'm ready to go. I'm ready to move on to something else and to know that a place like stuy exists where there's always something more to offer. I'd much rather leave stuy not fully explored than leave it completely bored. I can only think of the word satisfaction. Complete and utter satisfaction.

Where did it go it was so...where did it go it was so...
Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior...
My childhood gone, goodbye.
Goodbye twelve. Goodbye thirteeen, Goodbye fourteen.
Goodbye fifteen. Goodbye sixteen. Goodbye seventeen.
Hello love!
Go to it! Go to it!
And now life really begins.

P.S. shit! made it through high school without growing tits!! (hahaha <3 valerie clark)

things that make me happy: (in the spirit of lists)
being officially done with all stupid college board tests (or at least the ones in high school)
crushlists (the wall of love was intense and amazing)
walks to 14th street
club monaco
being so in the mood for a party tomorrow and there being a party tomorrow
no more stupid bio shit. (cat dissection, here i come!)
girly blushy moments by the senior bar (vanish, you understand)
summer! (please be awesome? ok thanks.)

Twentyish more days and I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that senior year was the way it was not because it's the way it is but because it's the way I am. True, I did a bunch of my stupid little goals (i finished 3 months as a vegetarian, ending it with a delicious roast turkey thanksigiving style feast, i had a shot of wheatgrass and i went an entire day without talking.) I did a bunch of my pointless school year goals and I managed to check off a bunch of my things to do second term. But I donno. In the end, i think all these goals and lists and stuff were just ways to give meaning to an otherwise raison d'etre-less year. Actually no, that's not it. It's not that i need meaning in everything i do. I just need to have something at stake. And right now, the few things I thought were still at stake...well, not so much.

The past few days have really kinda cemented this for me (although toasting tequila shots with lime and fastfood salt packets and being obnoxious and french and making ridiculous calls was quite enjoyable.) I wanted to do the bike tour on sunday partially as a throwback to france, partially to see if i could still do it and... i donno. And it was lots of fun. Perfect day, good ride. And then when i was pushing myself up the last part of the tour, the onramp of the Verrazano, in order to keep myself going, i kept fighting with myself, trying to give myself reasons to make it to the top and normally in those situations, i make myself "if you do this then this will happen" type promises and half-way up the mile and a half ramp i either ran out of promises or couldn't think of any that i cared enough about to push myself for. (I made it up, anyway.)

And everything is so up in the air....

I think I need to just get away for the summer. Live completely on my own. Take complete care of myself and restart and cut my own strings and stop the pinpricks and the memories begetting memories. Am I just running away? Maybe. But in a way, that's what i want college for too, anyway.

Maybe the world will seem better in 5 minutes when i fall asleep listening to jack johnson. Probably.

She said I think I'll go to Boston...
I think I'll start a new life,
I think I'll start it over, where no one knows my name,
I'll get out of California, I'm tired of the weather,
I think I'll get a lover and fly em out to Spain...
I think I'll go to Boston,
I think that I'm just tired
I think I need a new town, to leave this all behind...
I think I need a sunrise, I'm tired of the sunset,
I hear it's nice in the Summer, some snow would be nice...
Boston... where no one knows my name...