The only thing that makes me cry when I think about leaving high school is that I can’t take my English teacher with me. He’s taught me so much over this past year, helped me with so many things, and just…reading what he wrote me in my yearbook made me cry today.

It makes me afraid to graduate. Genuinely, for the first time this whole year, I am afraid to leave high school—because I’m leaving him. I let him in, somebody I was determined to never let in but ended up trusting implicitly and respecting and looking towards like some kind of beacon. For the first time, I have to be the one to say goodbye. Me. Really and truly.

I don’t want to. I don’t even know if I can.

It terrifies me.