...Is Jordan Zimmbleman's birthday.

Also, it's graduation.

It's funny, when I hit freshman year, I couldn't wait for the glory and the attention and the spotlight when I graduated high school.

Now I almost dread it.

I avoided any and all pictures possible during Baccalaureate and came home rather irritable, only to be stifled by shock and slight awe at the love my grandmother shows me through a check for $200. Yes. Two-hundred-freaking-dollars. I'm a little afraid to touch it, but I think it's going towards a laptop.

Anyway. Tuesday is tomorrow. And I barely made it.

I barely made it and yet I still did. Battered, bruised and still bleeding a little from the ways I was scraped around this year, trying to get up enough credits to walk.

So here I am, wishing I hadn't.

It's not that I don't want to graduate, because I do. A part of me is actually excited to be a senior and graduating and finally moving onto maturer groups of people, instead of the stupid drama that high school brings.

I'm more afraid of what's to come. For the last four years I've had the same, wonderful friends, the same school, the same wings, the same gross bathrooms. Great, funny teachers and security guards that got along with all high schoolers that didn't hate them.

It took me four years to find the friends I got, because our group got both larger and a little closer with each one. I know that, as much as I might have wanted to, had I gone to West instead, I wouldn't find the same set of people I've come to care for. And I'm grateful for my fortune.

These four years have also brought me pain. Drama (both theatrical and social) dragged me through the rocks and sand and dirt, spitting into my wounds and bandaging them with salt. It wasn't ever truly aimed at me, but I was always surrounded by it. I was engulfed in it, be it from Guest, her cast, or people shooting their drama at my friends. My "family." I did my best to try and listen, but most of the time our discussions ended it me brooding in a worse mood than the victim. I hated seeing my friends upset, so naturally I wanted to get back at those who did the deed.

I never did.

I almost wish I had.

But it also brought me kindness. The kindness that had embraced me when I was down in the dumps; the worst bout of drama that had actually come at me that year--sophomore year. Looking back, I realize that I had caused it myself, quite unintentionally, and put myself through all that for no apparent reason. But then I think again, and figure that if I hadn't done such a stupid thing to myself, I wouldn't have really joined the group I'm with now.

These years were filled mostly by friendship. A very close friendship between a great many people. And though I know most of us will be going to the same school next year (or rather, come August), the fact that my daily routine is ruined, and has been for three days now.

Seniors, tomorrow, we graduate. Tomorrow we will walk the line and sit in the seats, listen to all the memories and sing our songs. We will be accepted and we will leave the Home Depot Center, and we will be official adults--freshmen in college. No longer will we be able to enter our high school halls and go to class.

Though that won't stop me from entering them, anyway.

I just want all you seniors to see this and know that we are all back at the bottom, all in the same boat, even though different goals are moving it forward.

I wish you all the best of luck, and I offer you my congratulations and thanks.

Thanks for being there, thanks for tolerating me, and thanks for walking with me.

Welcome to the world, class of 2009.