Editor’s note: This essay is the fourth and final installment in a series of essays by local students about how they’re preparing for their futures and finding challenges and joy in the process. Learn more about these students, read all the essays and get updates at st.news/studentvoices2024.
I have always valued the friendships in my life, and I cannot name something more crucial to my growth than my friends. During senior year, when things have often become murky and scary, the teen girls I surround myself with have provided more navigation than anything I could do on my own and anything many adults could do for me. We use conversation as our way to express love. It’s how we turn those hopeless and frustrating moments into something that doesn’t feel so gut-wrenching.
I have used talking, venting and crying to navigate the past year and to help my friends navigate their lives. Now watching these girls receive college acceptance letters feels similar to the pride a mother would experience. These friendships have been indescribably helpful, telling them I am proud because they need to hear it, comforting them because nobody else is, reading them stories before bed and helping them with their math homework.
Those experiences have given me a strong foundation to stand on. They’ve allowed me to experience the joy of having friends to lean on and the responsibility of being relied on. When I think about that joy and responsibility of friendship, I think about Indigo, my best friend. She has supported me through everything and is caring and funny. Wherever I’m at, she’ll stand right there with me. All my friends will.
I see sides of my friends that no parent, boyfriend or teacher could. I see them at their lowest, where I support and validate them. Those moments are ubiquitous in teen life; when you feel like your life is over. School feels like it’s killing you, college applications feel like impending disappointment and your parents, bless their hearts, just don’t understand. But I also get to see my friends at their best, those moments when our cheeks hurt from smiling so hard and the upcoming stress of adulthood feels years away.
My parents haven’t failed to drill into me that I can be or do whatever I want, but the concept is something I truly had to learn myself. Often, I have felt inferior in school for not wanting to be a doctor or lawyer or not striving to change the world. Mostly, I felt like I wasn’t aiming high enough. I could have joined clubs, could have cared more about tests or canceled on my friends to study, but I didn’t. I also can’t say I regret it.
Senior year has been the most mentally taxing year of high school. Frustration and hopelessness are all but rare these days. I’ve repeated in my head hundreds of times: “Just make it to graduation.” That being said, I know that one day I will wish I had more of these moments that I take for granted, even the moments I wish away.
I am not the perfect student, have never had straight A’s and often struggle to find motivation. But the past year has proved that none of those things have ever been telling of my value or intelligence.
I’ve always just assumed people could see my potential the way I do. But then I had teachers who took my grades at face value, and I very quickly had to learn to live with being perceived differently than how I felt. For me, this meant needing to have an unwavering sense of security within myself. Being entirely confident in my friends’ abilities to succeed revealed the pointlessness of hesitating to be confident in my own. My friends offered the guidance I needed to become completely secure in myself in a way that wasn’t even slightly tied to my GPA or an acceptance letter.
It’s hard to tell you I am confident about my future or to explain some ambition that will drive me toward success. That is mostly because I have only the vaguest idea of where I’ll be in a year.
I am someone who loves the familiar. That means that moving out of Seattle, going to college and making new friends should be terrifying. But it isn’t anymore. That is what has shifted in the past year. I know myself incredibly well. I know how to push myself, how I like to learn, the kind of people I like to be around and when to give myself grace.
Being on the precipice of change comes with a lot of instability, but these friendships act as a trade; you be a pillar for me, and I’ll be a pillar for you.