This thing we call high school.

If I take off the shoes that I used to walk across the stage, will it all be over?

I remember when we read Romeo and Juliet in freshman English and everybody laughed but secretly I wanted to feel the way that star-crossed lovers could.

and I did at some point, I'm sure of it.

People say I'm strong because going to three different high schools isn't an easy thing to do, but I just laugh because it's easier than staying at one, that's for certain.

Sometimes I tell stories about my life and as soon as I am finished I realize that the whole thing was a lie and it never actually happened in reality. But I don't tell anyone that I imagined the whole thing, because nobody likes to be thought of as a liar.

I kissed 6 boys in all of high school and I'm not sure if I actually liked any of them.

All of the boys I did like I was always too scared to kiss. Nobody wants to give away lip cells when they actually mean something.

Remember when Daniel Chen was a nerd and Erin Lowman was popular and nobody talked to somebody like Judy Hutson? Remember when Mary Hutchins was the queen of the school even though half of her friends didn't like her and Chad (the boy that looks like Lenny the Shark) was a loser? Remember how every girl wanted to talk to Zac Collins, but his own friends wouldn't hang out with him?

I do, I think. Or maybe I just made this all up and these people don't matter at all.

I wore short floral shorts to school sophomore year and I still regret that day because Jacob Miller doesn't like girls that wear short floral shorts.



It doesn't matter if I live in Boise or Beaverton or Forest Grove because high school is the same and we all lose our sense of romance after four years of supposed education anyways.

I don't think my parents have checked on me in years.

I could have lived without the changing friend groups, but I'm glad I had a basement door that led up a steep flight of stairs to my backyard so I could escape my thoughts at 2 am when my neighbor wanted Taco Bell.

Maybe sleeping on the trampoline under the stars didn't mean we were cool, and maybe Taylor Swift wasn't singing to make us happier, maybe she just wanted to let herself know it was going to be okay.

High school is all in our heads and if any of us were brave enough to climb down the ladder that led us up into the clouds in the first place we would realize that our dreams make up half of our reality and that boy that sat next to us in AP literature is nothing but a bunch of atoms and particles carved by the hand of God to distract us from Edgar Allen Poe's words of tragedy.

We can kiss boys and we can wear floral shorts and we can tell lies and we can even fantasize over Romeo and Juliet if we want and that doesn't mean that we want to end up dead. Three different high schools in three different cities and two different states over three and a half years doesn't mean that we like change. It just means that we are not in control over our own lives.
and that is okay.

Maybe I shouldn't have graduated after three and a half years. Maybe if I had stayed that extra semester in Oregon instead of running off to BYU where I knew I would be safe, I would be that strong girl that everyone back home talked about.

If I had stood proud on top of a lunch table and let the world know what I believed in, something like Samuel, high school could have been a construction zone. It could have been a place where I built my life.

But instead I am just waiting to get out of here again and run back to BYU where I can build there. I'm just waiting and telling myself that I will be a better person once this is all over.
I whisper to myself late at night, "It's all about the circumstance."

"As soon as I'm in better circumstances, of course I will change my life around. Of course."

And that is the thing that we call high school.

And this is the thing that we call a dream.

And so it goes

1. I haven't cried in a rather long time.
2. I kissed a boy that I don't have any feelings for.
3. My friends in Boise all graduated. and I am here.
4. The future scares me almost as much as the ocean.
5. I have the most fat I have ever had on my body ever and I don't even mind.
6. I think I know what love is. Really, I do.
7. I went swimming today and I felt like I was 6 years old (in a very good way).
8. Somebody likes my writing.
9. I bought my mom flowers today.
10. My two cactus plants are starting to grow.
11. I wish I never left BYU for the summer
12. I don't fit into my family.
13. My brother now has a pet turtle.
14. I want a key to unlock your eyes... you can keep your heart though.
15. I need to find somebody to go on a walk with me tomorrow.

By any other name

Forest Grove, Oregon.
In case you are wondering Forest Grove is nothing like a Grove.

Have you ever missed every single place on this Earth that you have ever been? Every place except for the place that you are right now?

We deserve mountain tops and deep hidden valleys. We deserve a lake where we can sit with our almost-lover that we are too awkward to define anything with. We can cast a fishing line that will float out to the middle of the deep water along with all of our late school assignments and missed calls from mom. We deserve good food and music that doesn't quite match our current mood but it's the only thing on Spotify and we already used all of our skips for the hour.



Or maybe we don't deserve these things but it's the least this universe could do for leaving us here in this town that somebody called a grove.
We could lock this town up forever if we wanted. We could throw the key into Hells Canyon or grind it up and sprinkle it over rice so the children in Singapore could finally get some protein in their diets.

But we don't because somewhere deep inside our hearts (probably somewhere near the left ventricle) we know that this town built us, or we built it, or maybe we both just sat around while the armies of adults that gave us lunch detention and cut our sandwhiches and gave us 78% on art projects that deserved much higher built this town and us. Maybe. or maybe we are all just foxes and our minds are fleeting and this life is just a practice for us all because the eternities will be perfect.



Forest Grove is not a Grove and nobody wants it to be.