by Emily Martin.

Here I stand in a pool of 489 souls at the corner of End and Beginning. There are the sure, the unsure, the ready and the scared. The nearer “today” stumbles toward May 29, the more elusive words become when I attempt to say what I’m thinking, but I’ll try to articulate this feeling that’s been swelling up inside me for months or maybe even years. I want to thank everyone. I want to genuinely and sincerely thank every single person I have met over the course of the last 13 years.

People in solitude would hardly be people. We become who we are by absorbing little bits of this and that, of him and her. It’s not just parents and teachers who have influenced us, but probably even more so the peers whose environments in which we have chosen to submerse ourselves. I am who I am right now at this very moment because I had a best friend for 10 years, because I stepped up out of the rubble of broken relationships and used old bricks to build new buildings. I am this person because, with those who shared with me in our lives, I decided it was cool to like math and express myself in writing. I am this girl who found an interest in writing and in thinking and expressing that thought because I had people in my life encouraging me to think for myself, to critique myself and ask myself why I believe what I believe. I am who I am because I saw a man I didn’t know sitting on a yellowed ad bench on the side of the road.

I am the sure, the unsure, the ready and the scared.

So here I will stand in that royal blue pool of 489 souls and I will throw my past into the air as high as I can and I will watch the past of each soul rain down and wash away into our new beginning. And in that moment, as brilliant, wonderful and terrifying as it will be, my heart will overflow with an undying gratitude for every friend, every loved one, everyone who believed in me, every stranger in passing and for you that I really cannot nor will I ever be able to quite express.

TL; DR: Thank you.