The summer before senior year should’ve been everything: making memories, packing for a year I was excited about, hanging out with friends and family, killing it at an internship, and figuring out what I actually want to do after college.
Instead, the summer I turned a senior was the worst summer of my life. Time felt like it had stopped.
On the last day of junior year, right after I submitted my last final, I was excited to go home and spend some time with my family before my internship started. Ten minutes from the house, the hospital called my mom, and we got the worst news.
My grandma had died. That one phone call changed everything. The woman who taught me how to read, who showed up for every little thing in my life, was gone. I didn’t even get a chance to breathe after finals before grief hit, heavy and endless.
Coming home felt like walking into someone else’s house. It was quiet, heavy, and full of reminders. Instead of laughing with friends or prepping for my internship, I was arranging a funeral, picking her last outfit, and trying to figure out how to exist in a place she used to fill.
But the world didn’t stop. My New York internship still expected me to show up. I had to make my family proud in the midst of a world so dark.
So I became two people at once, the professional intern who joined meetings and answered emails, and the human who collapsed in my dorm in tears when the day was over. Smiling for the team, crying when I was alone, that became my routine.
This summer wasn’t about discovery or glow-ups. It was about survival, moving forward when everything felt frozen. And honestly, it was gray, slow, and loud in all the worst ways.
People kept saying, “You’ll get through this,” like grief is a checklist. It isn’t.
It showed up in tiny, stabbing ways: my grandma’s voice in my mind, her favorite songs popping up on my phone, the smell of her perfume on a sweater I couldn’t wash yet. Those little things made every day away from my family and home feel longer.
I put on a face that said, “I’m fine.” Nights were the worst; daytime had tasks, nighttime had the echo of the last moments I had with her. I’d try to sleep and end up scrolling through pictures until I hated myself for living in pixels instead of living with her.
When people asked how my summer was, I said the safe thing, “Good, busy.” On LinkedIn, I probably had the best summer, so everyone thought I was just okay.
Unpacking the indescribable truth in public didn’t feel possible. The truth was, I was and am depressed, not poetic, just the real kind that makes getting out of bed feel like failing an assignment.
There’s no lesson here. No finale where everything makes sense. There’s just me, still walking through the rooms she used to fill, still learning how to breathe in them again.
If the summer was supposed to be a highlight reel, it turned into the part of the movie you skip because you can’t watch it yet. And honestly, I’m still not ready.
I have a new friend this senior year, and its name is grief, heavy, uninvited, but mine to carry. I’m still here, making it through one day at a time.