I have been fantasizing about this day for over two years, imagining myself shouting "Screw you guys; I'm going home!" as I sauntered out the door and blaring "I Quit" and "Jubilation Day" all the way home, staying up all night catching up on reading because I don't have to wake up the next morning, and just generally feeling 100 lbs lighter.

Today was not a happy day. Bits of it were happy, to be sure. Bits of it were sweet and heartwarming and funny. And, more than anything, today gave me a sense of peace about something I've been struggling with and worrying about for some time: I know, after explaining my plans roughly nine thousand times in six thousand different ways, that I'm doing exactly the right thing for me.

But today was not a happy day. Today was a graduation day where all of my classmates were held back. Classmates to whom I was close, classmates to whom I only waved while passing in the hallway, classmates who are perfectly content staying in school until they age out, classmates who have talked to me about how ready they are to graduate themselves. Classmates who are all highly concerned that the school won't even be open in four months. Classmates who, in the mean time, are stressing about the upcoming exam that will determine whether they can even come back if it is open.

Yearbooks were signed, senior gifts were bequeathed, lockers were cleaned out, KITs were exchanged along with #s and promises to write, sad puppy faces and not-really-jokes about abandonment were ubiquitous, and I am now in a position where I have to sign in in the front office if I want to visit.

Today was not a happy day, and now, knowing that there will be nothing between me and the real world when I wake up tomorrow morning (or, let's be serious, tomorrow afternoon) - nothing between me and working out how I'm going to have health insurance and how I need to shift money around my accounts and how I am going to get my applications done in the roughly 5 days I have between now and my deadlines and how I'm going to actually achieve my goals instead of just talking about achieving them - knowing all that, I find myself exhausted beyond words, feeling like a selfish heel, and am apparently going to go to sleep earlier than I have in months.

obsessive - compulsive