A letter from May 01, 2026

Dear FutureMe, It’s 2 weeks before my ap exams my senior year and I’ve been feeling so sad and bittersweet lately. I don’t even care about my exams I’m just so sad that I will be graduating and moving away from my friends. I feel like I’ve let time pass by without appreciating it because all I’ve thought about was my future when I haven’t been living in the moment. I know that sounds corny asf but I just don’t know how to feel. I feel an overwhelming sense of nostalgia when I look back on old pictures of myself throughout highschool and I miss my childhood and am so distraught on how it’s over. I know my whole childhood I was dreaming of becoming an adult and having a career I’m passionate about but I’m sad that I spent my childhood dreaming of that instead of appreciating being a child you know? Like I guess I’m just so sad because especially junior-senior year I’ve really grown and matured and have gone through so many experiences that just don’t make me feel like a kid anymore and it’s jus sad when I think about it and it makes me even more sad when I see mom and dad and realize they are thinking the exact same thing. I know dad is always saying he wishes I never grew up and I would always blow it off but now it makes me wanna cry thinking that I’m thinking that too and that he’s growing old with me. I don’t know why but my whole 18 years of living I feel like my parents have stayed the same age since they are adults which I feel like can be somewhat true because they are in a different part of their life where everything isn’t changing so much but I forget that this is their first time living too and experiencing their child grow up and the bitter sweetness of raising them. I hate change. But change is good and is necessary for growth but I’m also just so scared. I don’t want to move away from my friends I just want to stay a carefree teenager who gets to hang out with her friends every weekend and giggle about memes and play stupid games and do stupid **** and not have a worry in the world about the future. But I also feel like change is necessary to appreciate stuff like that. If I stayed a teenager forever I wouldn’t be so appreciative of the times where I was a stupid teen because that would just be my everyday life. So maybe change isn’t a bad thing, it’s just different. And different is hard, but that’s just the way things go. I’ve been really bad at dealing with my emotions. Whenever I feel this way I typically just push the emotions away because it gets too hard to think about and I get overwhelmed because I feel my emotions so deeply but I do not like to show anyone because it is too vulnerable. Anyway, from now on I will try to not think about the future even though it will be hard because I’ve spent my whole life thinking of the future, but I need to be more aware of the moment because I can’t stop time and it’s the one thing u can’t get back, so from now on I will try to appreciate it more and stop worrying about change.