I have never been that excellent at goodbyes.

I suppose it is due to the fact that for the first ten-ish years or so of my life I was, oh how would you phrase it? Introvert, quiet, shy, soft-spoken, or the worst one of all, backward. Anyway, you get my point. I could never think of anything to say to people I had just met because I didn’t know what they liked, and in turn no one ever spoke to me because they had someone else. So…. I never really had a lot of friends growing up.

The ones I did have would always leave without a word, and that didn’t really change till middle school and the first two years of high school here at LC. I would find some pretty awesome friends then. However, I was still that quiet one. I hadn’t gone up to my friends and sparked up a conversation, they did.

I honestly don’t know what possessed me spring semester sophomore year to go pick up a Journalism application. Given my personality and tendencies, the choice would make absolutely no sense. I think I had seen the yearbook that year, My Generation, and had been blown away by it and the video production. I also knew a few people who were on the staff at that time that had talked it up, and I thought to myself ‘what is the harm in applying?’

Never in my life had I stressed over an application as much as I did that one, but I somehow made it in. First day junior year I was sitting in third block journalism. I only knew one person in the class. The rest were almost complete strangers. An introvert’s worst nightmare.

Yet somehow, I got to know them. First it was an interview with one, partners on a spread with someone else, errand runners with another, and suddenly I had made some new friends. Not only that, but with people I had never thought I would meet. Others with different backgrounds, histories, and ideas. Ideas we had the freedom to explore and share.

Man I adored it, and I worked hard because I did. This was a new field that I never been exposed to, and I wanted to learn everything about it. Then I was fortune it enough to be chosen as one of the next year’s editors, something I still can’t really believed happened but I am blessed that it did.

Working as an editor was hard, hard work but being around my lovely co-editors, staff, and Wally made every moment of it irreplaceable.

I have grown more than I could ever imagine here. I got my confidence here.

Which is why saying goodbye is even harder.

How do you say goodbye to a class that is not really a class but one crazy family? How do you say goodbye to a staff who knows the meaning of hard work more than any other person in the school? How do you say goodbye to of the most talented and best co-editors out there? How do you say goodbye to an advisor who went beyond the word and became a mentor and a friend?

How do you say goodbye to random pizza parties? Dance sessions? Loving teasing? The source of your laughter and happiness for the last two years of your life?

The answer is simple: you don’t.

I have never been that excellent at goodbyes, and now you know why. What you don’t know is how I get around them. By never truly saying goodbye. I shut down the part of my brain that processes it completely until I can’t anymore. I did that when the senior staff left last year, I did it when my ‘friends’ left me in elementary and middle school, and I am doing it now.

I don’t do it to shut any memory of it out, I do it because I love those around me too much to really face the reality of what is going on around me.

Instead, I process it as a “until we meet again,” and that is how I will do it now.

So to the staff, the memories of this year, Wally, Casey, Alexis, and to last four years I have known:
Until we meet again. I love you all. <3