orthogonal vectors and pre-nostalgia

I am a second semester senior.
I am a second semester senior?
I am a second semester senior!
I am a second semester senior!!?!!???!?!!@?@%#@%^#!?@$!^%&^%
I am a second semester senior...

Each of these sentences, distinct with their marked punctuations, resonate with me in ways all different yet identical in a way, kindred to the idea of "senior year".

"Senior year" has been all but a dream to me for the last... forever? In a way, it still is. I've always considered senior year not as a time to enjoy while knowing it won't last, but as a fleeting feeling, almost like a personality in and of itself, conjoined together piece-by-piece by a combination of "lasts" to revel in. Now that it's here, I don't know what I should be doing to serve it justice. To be wearing its hat now is still a reality to wrap my head around.

I have an ever-evolving, heavily edited Google doc pinned in my tabs labelled "senior year" with subheadings of "To do!", "To watch!", "To buy!", "To learn!", and "To go!". In the literal sense, these are tangible goals for this semester, a few relatively undemanding to-dos that help me compartmentalize and simplify: Learn what sourdough is. Buy Monopoly Go for spring break (or any other fun game). Go to TopGolf with friends, half off on Tuesdays. Watch High School Musical 3 the Tuesday night before the last day of school. 

Lately as I drive home from orchestra rehearsal with Halle and Jay as I do every Saturday afternoon, I've been feeling both sad and glad. I've been feeling a certain paralysis- not in a heavy way, but more in an anticipatory way, a "I want to screenshot this memory into my mind and never let it go" kind of way. I can already tell that I'm going to miss it.

Pre-nostalgia is one of my favorite feelings. A state of wistful consciousness and melancholy; missing a moment as I am living it, missing it even before it is gone. But perhaps as I often look to my future self looking back at her past self, the vectors of imagination become orthogonal (calc joke!), and the opposite dimensions collapse. And if so, perhaps what I've been doing all this time is simply looking more focusedly and entirely at the present.

calc3 🤝 lit

Already, I feel this final year of high school has challenged me to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, though not at all vertically. Already, my heart is so whole, stretching and tugging at capacity with feelings of happiness and sadness and surrealness and everything in between. Already, I don't think I need anything more.

So maybe my true goal is to do everything I say I want to do, all while thinking or worrying about absolutely nothing else. To pay acute attention to the memories I know I will miss, to extend moments as far as they will allow, to hold onto the present as long as it can last.

I want to linger a little longer at the lunch table. I want to keep people-watching in the parking lot with Manahil, conjuring the most outrageous stories for those that unassumingly pass us. I want to honk at my friends' cars when I see them. I want to race Karina down Long Lake (and I want to see Adam contentedly riding his bike beside us, with his wired earbuds in but his hands off). I want to take the long way home. 

adam, celebrity of long lake x crooks