Fear of the Future

Recently my older brother graduated from high school, which is a terrifying thing, for him more so than for me.  But it's had me thinking about my future.  In two years, I'll be in his place, and it's so strange to think that.  Just yesterday it seems I was doing cartwheels in the front yard and playing with my mom's makeup.  Today, while I may not be all grown up just yet, I'm getting there.  And that, my friends, is the scary part.

When you're in school, that's your entire life.  Wake up, go to school, get bored to death in class, kill yourself trying to keep up with the work, go to sleep and then repeat.  For nearly my whole life, that has been the routine.  That has been my world.  But when I graduate, reality will set in.  The world becomes much more imminent and so much larger than before.  All the possibilities are petrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. You only get one chance to do it right, so what if you screw it up?  College will provide a limited bubble, but once you're out in the real world, there's no going back.

The future is something my childhood friends and I would talk about at sleepovers. Being a teenager sounded galaxies away, a far off future viewed of more as an alternate reality than a tangible actuality.  But as I have aged, time flies by even more quickly every passing second.  Time is such a fickle, impossible thing that never cooperates.  Some hours stretch into oblivion and other times entire days seem to have passed without recognition.  The next thing I know, I'll be on my own, with my life no longer so intertwined with those in my immediate vicinity.

I have goals and dreams, a relative plan.  But in life, anything can happen.  I want to travel the world, experience every inch of life there is to offer, and to read as many books and talk to as many people as humanly possible.  I want discovery and adventure.  But who really knows?  Being an adult isn't a piece of cake (although there is cake, which I like to view as a consolation prize for all the abominable things that happen).  There are ambiguous things such as taxes, jobs, and all those other facets of adult life that no one has really explained.  There's no guide book to life, not really. Nobody knows what they're doing.  We are all just trying our best, day by day.  We all carry on.  It's all we know how to do.   

The question I am wondering is:  am I prepared to leave the bubble?  High school is hell, and I won't be sad to leave that particular aspect behind, but to abandon that relative sanctuary is like walking across a tight rope with no safety net.  Life is huge and ominous, cruel and potentially beautiful.  Taking that plunge will be terrifying in every way imaginable, but you can't live without a little risk.  You just have to jump, and hope there's no rocks at the bottom.