I recall my middle school days — eager to approach the depths of what seemed to be the most important thing in the world — high school.

Little did I know, once I got there, I would adjust, and then as we all do, prepare to take on the next step — college.

But how did life become this way?

I now sit here, a junior in high school — with the endless college lists and unstoppable pressure to succeed in order to achieve the future that I so desperately strive for…

But when does it stop? When will I ever be satisfied with the moments I am living in now?

Perhaps there is no answer. Perhaps we all just live for what is yet to come. It’s sad, really.

The pressure we face as juniors in high school is atrocious. This year is vital. It’s like you don’t think of the future until one day when it slaps you in the face. I now sit here wishing I’d poured myself into the last two years of my academics rather than playing catch up now to attend the schools that I so desperately desire.

And as if that isn’t enough, we now have to go even further above the bar to claim scholarship money…because God knows we can’t afford to pay for a required education.

The pressure we face feels ceaseless.

I have watched those around me go off to start their new lives and clean slates in fresh places.

And all I can think now is —“When will that be me?”

It feels as if it couldn’t come soon enough.

I remember last year, feeling crushed as one of the most significant figures in my life explained their excitement to leave me. He was older, and I couldn’t wrap my head around what made him want to go so badly. I was here… I still am, but he has left.

It has now occurred to me that maybe even the people we love the most can’t tie us to love the places we are in. It really is the opportunity of adventure and the purity in new places with new faces that we crave.

This is what we live for —

But temporary people will come and go. You will eventually leave the places you have gone only to return back home… back where you began.

Perhaps life is a boomerang.

We all long to leave. We all long for the future. And we all will receive it eventually -— so as we sit here bored and eager for this fanaticized life that waits behind our minds and wildest dreams, perhaps now we should turn around before we run away to say good-bye.

For we will only ever really have one home…

And we will all blow where the wind takes us

As we long for the grass on the other side

But no matter where we roam,

At the end of the day —

We will all eventually return back home.

Home is where the heart is. Learn to live in it.