Dear Self,
You’re probably terrified. Gut-wrenchingly sad. Nostalgic. Overwhelmed. Hopefully a little excited and happy?
I hope you have a plan. It doesn’t have to be great, or even good. I just hope you have something planned that you’ll love and are excited to do. I don’t care if you don’t have a “real” job like your friends and classmates. I just hope you’re happy.
You did a lot of things during your junior year. You moved into your first apartment with your best friends. You finally got to take in-person classes at UMass. You made more friends than you could’ve ever imagined and you can’t wait to have your kids call them aunts and uncles someday. You got a job at a school. You broke up with your long-term boyfriend. You got to watch all of your friends turn 21. You walked the streets of Amherst at all hours of the night with your best friends without a care in the world. You photographed all of these moments.
I hope you’re looking back on all of your journal entries and photo albums, just letting all the memories of your time here flood back to you. From your Covid semester in spring 2021 on campus where you met your forever friends, to your junior year that was finally “normal” where you made even more forever friends, to however your senior year goes. I hope you loved every minute of it.
Right now, I find myself often saying that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, or that I’m here for a good time and not a long time. I hope you’re still living by this. Go out any time you get the chance. It’s a Monday and you have work in the morning but your friends want to go to Garcia’s? Go to Garcia’s. It’s Saturday and you’re exhausted from the night before but your friends want to go on a hike? Go on that hike. It’s a Wednesday and you’re swamped with homework but your roommates want to watch a movie with you? Watch that movie. These little things shouldn’t deter you from what could potentially be some of the greatest memories from these years. The last thing I want is for you to read this letter on the night before graduation and realize how many opportunities you missed out on because you were tired, had homework, or had work in the morning. Do it all. Say yes.
I bet the biggest emotion you’re feeling right now is sadness. I can say that right now I couldn’t be happier with where I am in life. I feel so happy and content right now because of all that going to this college has brought me. I have this great emotional attachment to the friends I met in the spring of 2021 because of the vulnerable state I was in at the time and the last thing I want to think about is all of us going our separate ways come graduation. So, I can only imagine the heartbreak you’re going through right now.
But what we need to take from this is all of the positives. While it’s okay to be sad (crying while writing this even thinking of graduation), you need, and deserve, to be happy. You need to be happy that all of your closest friends made it to graduation. You need to be happy that you get to celebrate on the same street as all of them since you all decided to live only a few houses apart for senior year. You need to be happy that you have these memories and friends and that the thought of change makes you upset. You need to be happy that you do have something to lose. Freshman year at your old school, you couldn’t even imagine the life you have now. Be grateful for that.
I know it doesn’t help that you are the most nostalgic person you know. You get nostalgic before the moment is even over. But I hope you are truly living. I hope you’re excited to walk across that stage and get that degree that you never thought you’d finish. And I hope you do it all alongside your best friends with a smile on your face.
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