in exactly 12 hours, i'll be walking across a stage and picking up my diploma. twenty four hours after that, i will no longer be a resident of Montreal.
my dad cried today. i've seen him cry exactly once before this, but today he told me that i've grown into an amazing person. it made me cry at the time, and i still tear up thinking about it. i said bye to alana last night, and managed not to cry because it didn't exactly feel real. i did my usual walk tonight, up st laurent, down mount royal, and down st denis, back to my house. i can't believe i won't roam these streets anymore. i can't believe that someone else will be living in this house, that someone else lived here before i spent three years in this bedroom. selfishly enough, i can't believe that this city will keep existing without me here. there's so many things that i learned to love: my tiny yoga studio, the all you can eat sushi place, the health food store that sells amazing shower gel, all my bars and clubs and favourite haunts, the walks that i took, the tiny places up in the Plateau that i discovered, the old port.
i love this place. it feels like home. in the four years i spent here, i learned so much. i cried a lot, and laughed ten times more than that. i walked everywhere. i spent time at school, and time holed up in my bedroom. there were days when i couldn't wait to face the world, and days where i wanted to hide in bed. i loved, and fought, and kissed, and hugged, and smiled. i hated, and did stupid things, and made a million mistakes, and learned to get over things, and laugh about things, and think things through. i made friends and lost friends and found old friends. i always thought that high school would be my defining period, and when i finished, i'd have everything figured out. now i know that not everything can get figured out and if it does, new problems cross out. i've changed so much that i can't even recognize the changes in my life.
it's amazing to be standing on the cusp of something so big. i feel so trite and stereotypical and i know that every other graduate has felt this way. but when it happens to you, you can't help but feel like that cheesy old saying is true: "today is the first day of the rest of your life."
